


Faces of the Mind

by RazeDevastator



Category: Dragon Ball Z, Konjiki no Gash!! | Zatch Bell!, Original Work, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Action, Alternate Identities, Angels, Anonymity, Betrayal, Blades, Blood and Gore, Child Death, Crossover, Cruelty, Dark Humor, Demons, Dragon Ball Z - Freeform, Drama, Explicit Language, Fantasy, Gen, Hatred, Heaven, Hell, Heroes to Villains, Imaginary Enemies, Imaginary Friends, Imagination, Investigations, Irony, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Trust, Magic The Gathering - Freeform, Major Character Injury, Manipulation, Masks, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mind Games, Mystery, Nightmares, Parent Death, Physical Torture, Psychological Torture, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Revenge, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia, Secret Identity, Self-Discovery, Self-Hatred, Shadows - Freeform, Sneaking Around, Supernatural - Freeform, Suspense, Threats of Violence, Thriller, True Forms, Villains to Heroes, Violence, Yu-Gi-Oh - Freeform, Zatch Bell, false identities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 49,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RazeDevastator/pseuds/RazeDevastator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone goes through changes in mental growth. Mine just happened to be a little less conventional than most others. Gifted with the ability to truly experience mind over matter, my imaginary friends seemed more real than the average person would ever think possible. But as I grew older, my idea of fun shifted to a much darker perspective. With time, imaginary enemies slowly crawled out of the shadows and threatened to torment me indefinitely as though I were locked away in a perpetual waking nightmare.</p><p>Desperate to uncover who these faceless devils really were, I began to write down everything that happened to me over the past three years, hoping against hope that I could look back one day and learn something about my tormentors that they didn't want me to know. In a crazy turn of events, the madness came to a screeching halt and I could finally breathe again. I've dug up these old recorded events to try and convey the story of how I survived the wrath of my relentless personal demons. This story allows you to delve into the inner-workings of my mind where twisted tactics and heart-wrenching betrayals spring up at every turn. A prisoner of my own mind where, luckily for me, there is no such thing as the impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE - My Own Worst Enemy

**Author's Note:**

> This entire story is technically a work of fiction, but as surreal as it sounds, I have indeed mentally experienced every detail in real life as a result of suffering from a genuine case of schizophrenia. When the imagination of a single human is all-encompassing, that person's ideas develop physical forms in his/her eyes... bleeding and blending into his/her perception of reality.
> 
> The fantasy aspect of the story isn't particularly heavy for this reason and most of it consists of shadowy figures lurking and tormenting behind the scenes in a fairly realistic setting.  
> If things ever got too whimsical, I would have easily been putting my own life in grave danger on a frequent basis.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I take a moment to think back and reflect on how my life came to dissolve into this swirling torrent of terror before I ultimately escaped from my psychological imprisonment.  
> Admittedly stronger and wiser after surviving the ordeal, I take a good, hard look at the mystery called "life" and connect the pieces of the puzzle that formed my mental instability years ago. This chapter is basically an overview of things to come.

… Imagination and innocence…

We’ve all had both as a child… those days of merriment and lighthearted joviality… spending every treasured moment enjoying ourselves and living life to the fullest without a care in the world… But underneath this façade of blissful enchantment, at what point does the tranquility of innocence dissolve into chaos and the creativity of the mind betray you… transforming itself into the most dangerous personal force you could ever know?……

My name is Jason Landry (pronounced as "LAN-dree")… and throughout the twenty-one years of my life, I’ve been branded as many things… to some, a heartless liar… to others, a caring friend… but everyone I’ve ever known would undoubtedly agree that I’m a very reticent and guarded individual. I never let anyone into my life or personal affairs due to an insecurity I’ve carried with me for as long as I can remember. It’s for these reasons that I’ve hesitated in writing this story down on paper for public consumption… But common sense kicked in… and I realized that there just might be someone else out there who is going through the same vicious internal dilemma that I’ve endured for all these years… If there is even the slightest chance that I can help someone with a similar problem, then I will absolutely swallow my pride and divulge these events in my life that I’ve kept under lock and key down to the very last detail. I will _never_ let this horrific disease of the mind destroy the lives of _anyone_ else as long as there’s something I can do to prevent it…… With that off my chest, let me share with you a little something I’ve learned from narrowly surviving an ordeal that has scarred me for a lifetime……

As an adult, those memories of a fond childhood are what we covet most… We often catch ourselves reminiscing about happier times that transpired at some point in our lives… We might even unknowingly alter the memories to block out any negativity and capture only the desirable moments to reflect upon… The good old days… But most of us have outgrown these youthful fantasies. As a result of growing up, we’ve discovered that life is about much more than just having fun… In order to survive, we must be willing to apply ourselves and shape our own futures. It’s a hard lesson learned, but an integral part of paving the path to our destined callings. Even so, who’s to say we can’t still have a little fun along the way?

That would depend on your definition of fun… As we mature, we seem to grow wiser… but the tendency we have as a child to assume we know better than everyone else doesn’t subside so easily. In some cases, it worsens… As humans, we are prone to making mistakes… We will occasionally be led astray and manipulate others for various self-indulgent reasons. Maybe you’ll be tempted one day to play a simple prank on a friend and give in to that temptation even though it goes against your better judgment. Sure, it was all in good fun… but we also need to have boundaries and can’t overstep them under any circumstances. The problem with this moral belief is that – for those with wild imaginations – setting limitations and sticking to them does _not_ come easy… There will always be a point in our lives where innocence declines, but it was never proven that the imagination would undeniably diminish. Most of us end up losing both in the end or find a healthy balance to complement our life choices… but what happens when the once harmless creativity of a child and the obstinate, risky behavior of an adolescent collide…? The two converge into a lethal combination and launch the owner of the mind into an unforgettable and seemingly irreversible new perspective… With enough self-loathing, you discover what it truly means to live inside a nightmare of your own creation… a world that any sane person would _never_ want to step into… and for some, a fate arguably worse than death……

Kids have overactive imaginations… But from what I know, parents never see this as a problem. They let their children have their fun, figuring that no harm could come of it. What people don’t realize is that – when misused and left unchecked – the imagination can ravage the soul… destroying everything you cherish and leaving your entire existence empty and meaningless… The lines between reality and fantasy become blurred and distinguishing between the two becomes difficult. Because it’s a part of the mind, the imagination can deceive you when allowed to run rampant and the shapes and outlines in your head could take on a form of pseudo existence… They still appear different from true reality but seem genuine to you as though you were caught in an intermediate space where figments in your head blend into the veracity of reality. Just like when you interact seamlessly in a dream… only it’s occurring in real life. I learned this the hard way, and for a time, I was indeed consumed by my own imagination during my teenage years… I created companions for myself to help me through tough times as a kid, but as the mundane truth of adult life began to sink in, I craved for more excitement in the only way I knew how to achieve it. I took my uncanny ability to project unyielding imaginary friends to the next level and developed an online roleplaying website to practice molding different personalities under the cover of anonymity.

For a few years, I spent every ounce of my spare time on that website, masquerading as over a dozen different people each with their own names and background information. I could hardly believe I was pulling it off and reveled in the thrill of successfully pranking all these people. They were my puppets at the time but also my audience… With a single partner who I revealed my agenda to, I tried devising numerous gripping but outlandish stories that went beyond the scope of role play… I tricked those poor people into thinking hacking, grave-robbing, and even murders were happening in real life… Needless to say, I had a severe problem… Messing with people became my oxygen… I couldn’t go a day without deceiving someone for the feelings of empowerment it brought me. I could keep up the acts indefinitely, but god only knew how long I could control the many personalities that I’ve conjured in my head… In a desperate attempt to generate the most over-the-top and treacherous antagonist ever, something inside me must have snapped… I summoned up every ounce of my devilish feelings and embodied them into a mental incarnation of all my hatred, rage, and cruelty pooled into one single entity. Thank god I still had many kind-hearted and friendly personalities to balance this monster out, but while it was many against one, this monster had someone on the inside… My ruthless, faceless personality had the secret identity of the main protagonist and most innocent character in the entire roleplaying game… This changed everything and made it so – no matter how hard they tried – the side of good could never prevail… It was always my intention to have the heroes overcome the devil in disguise, but the wily schemes of that demon made the ride along the way utterly unbearable for my long-term friends who I only regarded as puppets and he only saw as victims… When I was driving them to tears with a stalker under the pseudonym of -*-M-*- and writing profiles of all their personal information, fears, and weaknesses, my partner knew it was time to end this before we did something we could never forgive ourselves for… His wake-up call finally reached through and I realized for the first time that I was deliberately hurting my own friends just for entertainment…… I knew it was sick and borderline sociopathic even though we only communicated visually through text… We ended the game and drew all the stories to a close. Sometime after that, we both confessed to those we wronged about everything we did to them and eventually mended our friendships. All’s well that ends well, right? You live and you learn… Problem is… _I_ didn’t……

At first I created those personalities for excitement… but it got to the point that I needed to continue interacting as them in order to distract myself from feeding my sick obsession with harassing people in a much more self-destructive setting in high school… When the site closed down and I finally silenced those personalities I’ve maintained for over four years, I found a group of female classmates who I thought could replace my old “puppets”… The distraction was gone and my temptation overpowered me… Still having not learned my lesson, I tried the “M” alias with them and watched them carefully in school while leaving riddles and notes for them to find that would make them feel uncomfortable… This went on without a hitch for about a week. Then one day when everyone went to lunch, I stayed behind to use my thumb drive on one of their computers to load up a customized wallpaper with a note on it from “M”. I didn’t expect one of them to leave her phone behind as a video camera to record me in the act… I was caught and sent to the dean’s office, so that clearly didn’t go so well… After this fiasco, I eventually came to grips with the fact that it was both unethical and impractical to play with other people’s lives the way I had been, especially if there were inescapable consequences to pay. But the sickness in my head still wasn’t satisfied… In hindsight, it would probably never have been sated no matter what I did to appease it… At this point, I stopped formulating plans and games and focused on my studies again. The boredom quickly returned, and I knew there was only one thing that could quell it… I fought off the temptation this time, learning from past mistakes but the logical, subconscious regions of my mind secretly informed me of a terrifying truth: It may be dangerous and/or illegal to mess with other people for my amusement… But there was never any law that said I couldn’t harass _myself_ … I could never be punished for something I did to myself, and as long as no physical harm came of it, I’d be in the clear. Obviously, I was trying to find a loophole to my very clear boundaries and, knowing I’d rebel against the idea, my subconscious mind must have locked the prospect away so I could never discover it…

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn… that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… but I had _no_ idea what the hell I was up against…… With nothing to lose and no risks involved, the figments in my head took on far darker and more deadly forms with each passing day. For the first time in my life, I learned what it was like to be on the other side of the torture I’d put my friends through, and then some… I conjured my own personal adversarial version of “M”, I betrayed myself time and again with fakers and liars who pretended to care… I even fabricated my own psychotic, hate-filled foe that made the one online seem like he was all bark and no bite… as gentle as a sleeping kitten…… Angels and demons waged war but it seemed there was no overcoming the darkness that threatened to torture me for eternity… Fear and paranoia consumed me, and trust became impossible to extend to anyone… I even began to suspect my friends and acquaintances in real life of being responsible for the torment I was put through day after day and night after night… For years I suffered in silence, praying that one day this nightmare… this personal hell would all be over… I’m not a masochist and I’m vehemently against the idea of suicide… but this was no way to live…… I had to do _something_ … I desperately fought back, ignorant of the fact that I was doing this to myself… Because of that, the evil in my head held an insurmountable advantage over me… I could never succeed when my every strategy was anticipated and the darker side of my mind was always planning a way for them to blow up in my face…

It just goes to show… Treat others the way you wish to be treated… Or you just might spend the rest of your life regretting it… Paying the ultimate price for your mistakes and going to any length for a chance at freedom…

I’m lucky – blessed even – to have gotten out when I did… And now, I’m going to tell you exactly how I pulled it off… I’ll be going back and explaining the events above in vivid detail, and it goes without saying that this story will undoubtedly take a _much_ darker and more twisted turn… Things _will_ get graphic, and those of you who are of a more sensitive nature may _not_ want to continue reading… You’ve been warned.


	2. The Divorce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot can change a kid and adversely impact his/her life... But nothing hits quite as close to home as a divorce between your own parents. Especially when the decision to separate was forced upon one of them in the wake of a harsh and undeserved blow to an innocent life.

All this confusion and terror… deceit, destruction, and unrelenting fear… but even more so, the loss of control when it came to my imagination…

Where exactly did it all begin?

I’ve spent the better half of an hour trying to collect my thoughts and now I’m thinking back to a much earlier memory… nearly a decade ago…

Simply put, even prior to the chaos of this story, I am _not_ what one would consider a conventional person… and I believe it all starts with my parents.

My mother and father, Dianne and Kevin Landry, are whom I would gratefully consider to be the epitome of gracious parental figures. If there were ever such things as “perfect parents”, then there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they would be shoo-ins for the position. Selfless, caring, and infinitely wiser than anyone I’ve ever known… I love them dearly and the last thing I ever wanted as a kid was for either one of them to leave my life… but when I was at the age of around 10 years old, tragedy struck… My father was afflicted with an incurable, but thankfully non-fatal, disease called Multiple Sclerosis. The disease paralyzed him from the waist down and left his overall nervous system uncooperative. Forced into early retirement from his job as a CAD drafter, he was confined to a wheelchair ever since.

Unfortunately, to make matters worse, my mother’s hectic work schedule in advertising and design combined with her status as one of the most competent (and therefore busiest) employees in the building made my father’s constant fundamental needs nearly impossible for her to keep up with. A divorce was inevitable, and though I have no memory of it, I’m told by her that I was there in the courtroom where it took place. Apparently I was horribly upset, but any recollection of this completely escapes me… It’s possible that the memory was simply so horrible that I blocked it away subconsciously and have since forgotten about it. Ultimately, my father’s side of the family worked out a deal that my lively and charmingly generous grandmother would care for my father, I would go to live with my mother, and I would be allowed to spend every other weekend at my father’s place to make up for some of the lost time.

During the time, I still thought this was unfair though… I was barely 10 and was born into Christianity, so I hadn’t the foggiest idea of why my parents would stop loving each other the way they did or why God would let this horrible thing happen to my dad… The experience made for a fairly difficult childhood, even with the nurturing love of my parents that emanated from two different sides. It probably affected my growth development and changed my character from the outgoing, fun-loving person I once was to someone more antisocial and introverted. This is the conclusion I’ve come to, but I surely don’t have these pent up feelings now. I’ve lived with the divorce for so long that the whole thing seems trivial at this point… but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect me at a younger age and took its toll on me as I grew older…

I suppose I denied my loneliness and slowly became more comfortable in my own solitude. Even so, ever since I was a toddler, my imagination has always soared… If I ever wanted something that I couldn’t have or didn’t even exist, I found ways to distort my perception of something else to convince myself that it was always right in front of me. From plastic multi-colored Mega Bloks, to Legos, to Bionicles, I felt like I could create anything I put my mind to. For more complicated likenesses, I worked with more malleable products like clay and Play-Doh (and yes, I did try tasting it when I was younger than five years old. And I remember the awful, waxy taste _quite_ well…). Before my father’s affliction, I helped him construct model cities with apocalyptic scenarios of tremendous rampaging spiders, mantises, and scorpions… We even both spray-painted and re-molded an action figure to make it into someone else. I believe it was a Batman action figure that we converted into Slade from the Teen Titans animated series before we knew that more accurate depictions like Deathstroke from DC Comics existed.

Basically, my imagination never dwindled even in the face of sadness and despair… it was just too strong to die out.

When I was left alone, I was able to make cartoon characters interact with me using my own knowledge of how they would behave. This was a passing phase that never went anywhere… or so I would think. I watched a lot of cartoons growing up since the idea of engaging in outdoor activities without my father didn’t sit well with me, and it provided me with quite the stimulation for keeping up my imaginary characters trend. Gradually, I began to realize that my imagination may have been potent, but it wasn’t particularly unique… I kept blatantly redesigning ideas that others have already put to the table and succeeded with… but if this is true, then why exactly is my imagination regarded as “powerful” at all?...

Perhaps it’s because I became genuinely affected and fully influenced by its allure.

It overwhelmed me and I began to actually _feel_ what I was seeing in my head. Like with most others, my imaginary friends would vanish from time to time and I would think nothing of it simply because I didn’t care at the time about their existence. However, my mind has always had a habit of doing things without agreeing with me first… it began to tell me things in mysterious ways… relay information that it uncovered but I was too cautious to consider in my consciousness… It reeled me in by communicating with me in a world where imagination could never be stifled... the one place where it was sure to be heard…

The dream realm…


	3. The Visitors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A defining dream from my childhood... that I will never forget for the rest of my life.  
> It consisted of two boys, a huge mistake, and a horrifying twist that I'll bet NO ONE saw coming...

Two years passed, and I was beginning to grow more comfortable with the thought of my parents being split up. It did have its perks after all… a second chance at favors, more gifts during holidays… and as long as I could see my father twice a month, it wasn’t really as bad as I thought after I had learned to live with it.

But two years of voluntary isolation left me with quite the lasting impression…

One night, I had a very vivid and bizarre dream… I was walking down a hallway within a large, empty room that was almost akin to the interior of a cathedral. I was not alone though… Walking beside me at an even pace was a boy who appeared to be around my age, and according to the dream, we were good buddies considering how friendly we were to each other.

Telltale signs such as talking and laughing as we made our way down the hall supported this theory.

We were both apparently 12 years old and Caucasian with an average skin tone; I was thin and of average height (probably about 5 feet tall) with wavy brunet hair and bright brown eyes. I wore oval-rimmed glasses, a dark red T-Shirt, blue jeans, and black sneakers with a red trim. The boy next to me was of a similar height and size but had a much brighter shade of brunet to his curly hair and piercing hazel eyes. He also didn’t have glasses but instead wore a black baseball cap over his head, a white hoodie with the hood down and something written on the chest (the brand most likely), blue jeans, and plain white sneakers.

For whatever reason in this dream… I knew this guy’s name as “Mike”.

We were both discussing something of common interest (it was possibly related to Pokémon, an old show from my childhood) as we were approaching a set of marble stairs leading downward. At the time that this dream was occurring, I had already begun to act out a little… pulling childish, mischievous little pranks on people and having a good laugh with them about it afterwards.

This time I tried to do something a little more daring…

As we were walking and Mike was focused on his story, I glanced at him and smirked as I held out my foot in order to trip him. It worked, catching him off guard as he lost his balance, gasping slightly in the middle of a sentence. Logically, he would have tumbled down the stairs, but I always intended to reach out and grab his arm to keep him from falling down them before I decided to play the prank.

But not everything always goes as planned, especially in a realistic dream…

I missed Mike’s arm when I tried to reach for it to prevent him from suffering a serious injury, and he ended up catching himself on his own just before he would have collapsed down the stairs and possibly broken his neck… He quickly turned around to face me, his face registering a mixture of confusion and disbelief… which quickly turned to anger. Naturally, he was fuming at me for trying to hurt him like that while I just stared back at him in mute horror, my eyes darting around frantically in panic after my “brilliant idea” had fallen apart at the seams…

“What the _hell,_ man!?” Still stunned by the attempt I apparently made on his life, Mike’s normally modulated voice was now thick with fury and shock.

I was in over my head with the impromptu outcome of this situation… I had no idea how to answer him coherently; I could only try to convince him it was a misunderstanding.

“I—No! It wasn’t supposed to—… I tried to—…!”

I was too alarmed to get the words out… I was floundering and stammering which only made the whole thing even less convincing for Mike. He just shook his head, highly skeptical of whether I was even telling the truth or not… He turned his back to me and continued walking down the stairs without me.

“Just stay away from me…” Mike barely turned his head just to glare at me as he said this. He disappeared into the distance below as I was left at the stairhead, completely alone. No one to blame but myself for my own punishing blunder… I might have just lost a good friend for acting on my impulse and doing something totally stupid. All I could think about was how I could possibly make it up to him…

Was this really the end…?

Then everything faded into darkness…

………

But to my surprise, the dream continued.

I was now in a third-person perspective, viewing Mike and, for the first time, his younger brother Ricky… Ricky was Caucasian with Mike’s exact skin tone; he appeared to be about 10 years old, was about an inch or two shorter than his brother, and had clear blue eyes as well as the same curly hair, only it was sandy-blond in color. He wore a navy blue T-Shirt over a black long sleeve shirt, black mesh shorts, and white socks.

The two brothers sat comfortably in a small room, about 12x15 feet in size, with soft, grey carpeting and a slanted ceiling that was low to the ground. The walls were an off-white color, and a television set was fixed against the front wall between two medium-sized beds (the left one was apparently Ricky’s) that were positioned on the left and right sides of the room. The doorway was to the left and there were no windows in the room. A single wooden dresser was situated at the left of the back wall that also supported a walk-in closet with wooden doors. The reason why I remember the details of the room so accurately is because this is a real bedroom that I know quite well… even though it wasn’t my own.

Ricky was perched on his bed, sitting cross-legged with eyes trained on his brother who was sitting in a wooden chair with cushioned seating in front of the TV; he tried to stifle an amused grin that was forming on his lips.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on the guy? Why’d he do that anyway?” The two looked pretty similar, but the difference in age showed through Ricky’s voice. Ricky’s was slightly an octave higher than Mike’s and it was a touch more soft-spoken.

Mike rolled his eyes at his little brother’s poor attempt at hiding his laughter. He could tell he was enjoying this…

“Beats me. We’re just walking down the hall and next thing I know he’s tryin’ to trip me down the stairs!”

Mike’s anger had subsided to irritation, but he was still more confused if anything. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why his friend would try to hurt him like that. Oddly enough though, he was at too young an age to question my loyalty as a friend. He never suspected that I might not be the person he knew prior to the incident.

“But you didn’t, right? I mean, nobody got hurt or anything.” Ricky’s regaled smile was fading; he could tell Mike was a little peeved. But something about it just seemed funny to him… I mean, his brother got punked... big time. How could he not delight in that at least a little bit?

Mike rolled his eyes again, annoyed with the possibility that he _could_ have gotten hurt if he didn’t stop himself from falling in time. But you could see it in his relaxed body language that he was starting to ease up a little.

At this moment, I entered the scene by knocking lightly on the already opened door to their room. I walked inside a few seconds afterward as Mike gave me an appraising look while Ricky glanced at his brother nervously. I simply stood in front of Mike, twiddling my thumbs nervously as I tried to choose my words carefully... not daring to meet his eyes.

“Listen… I’m really sorry about what I did back there…” I started, finally mustering the courage to look up at him apologetically. I definitely had his attention at least. I continued…

“I meant to catch you by the arm so you wouldn’t fall… I _swear_ … And you almost got hurt… I took it way too far… Please give me another chance…” I tried to be sincere, but there was still a hint of trepidation in my voice. Nevertheless, Mike finally got the message. He closed his eyes and shook his head gently in response.

“It’s fine, dude. We’re cool.”

Mike was ready to extend his forgiveness. His eyes drifted to the right for a moment until he immediately directed them back at me.

“Just… don’t do it again.”

I nodded my head and smiled slightly, grateful that he was willing to let bygones be bygones and put this whole thing behind us. Ricky was glad his brother was finally starting to come around, but he knew what would speed up the process… A cunning idea was brewing in his head… He smiled slyly and hopped off the bed. Mike and I turned our attention to him.

“I’m gonna go get us some snacks.” Ricky piped up. Mike just nodded in acknowledgement.

“Cool, thanks.” I said in eager agreement. Ricky left the room to go to the kitchen that was barely 15 feet away. Meanwhile, Mike and I were having a meaningful conversation… I learned things about him that made my jaw drop and had sent my mind reeling in bewilderment…

Just as I was finally starting to process the bombshell revelation that Mike explained to me, Ricky popped into the room from out of nowhere with a good-sized bowl of pretzels in one hand and something else in the other that he was holding behind his back… He was looking straight at me, unable to contain his excitement…

“Hey, Jason, think fast!” As he said the warning, my heart stopped dead in my chest when I saw what he threw my way……

Hurling toward me at an unavoidable speed……

… was an honest-to-god kitchen knife, with the razor-sharp blade pointed directly at me……


	4. Born without Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How often can you say that you've had the pleasure of meeting someone real... in a world where no harm can befall you?  
> The remarkable and awe-inspiring origins of Mike and Ricky are revealed as soulfully thought-provoking concepts are explored in this final installment of the dream that started it all...

As you’ll recall, right before I explained the peculiar events of the preceding chapter, I referred to the experience as a dream…

… but I never said it was a nightmare… and here’s where things _really_ take a memorable turn for the surreal…

The knife was flung toward me like a fastball… Being only five feet away, I had no chance of escape. Amid the tremendous shock and fear, as well as my momentary daze from Mike’s preposterous revelation, all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut, let out a horrified gasp, and brace myself for the painful impact… I recoiled and held out my arms horizontally, bending them inward with fists tightly clenched to shield my face and chest as the knife immediately met its mark… Frozen in fear yet trembling all the same, I maintained that position for a good four seconds… But something was wrong…

… The blade should have made contact by now… My nerves should be screaming out to me and my blood should be pouring out from the excruciating wound that it _should_ have left on me… The trajectory was _sure_ to reach me and yet…

… I didn’t feel a thing…… It’s as if the deadly kitchen utensil vanished into thin air when my eyes were closed…

Panting nonstop, I slowly opened my eyes and scanned my chest region for any signs of injury… incredulous by the fact that I was completely unscathed… Had I been completely conscious in real life during such a situation, I might have even suspected that my death was so swift and painless that I had already crossed over to the other side… But I was still in that room; still breathing, even though it was tremulously and it felt like my heart was about to jump out of my chest…

I shot a petrified gaze at Ricky, who was beaming with glee… The unexplainable thrill he was getting out of this was palpable… I shifted my gaze over to Mike, who was now doubled over with laughter…

_What the **hell** is going on!? Wh—who **are** these demented people!?_

As a preteen, I was more drawn to action entertainment media rather than horror and scary movies, so I hadn’t really known how frightening a psychotic mind could actually be… That came later, and if anything else, these two kids now seemed to personify that disturbing disorder…

Ricky knew he couldn’t leave me hanging for much longer. So after wiping a tear from his eye, he took a deep breath to recover and got all the laughter out of his system.

“Man, I got you good!” Ricky grinned widely at me as he said this, his voice still shaky from all the laughing. My fear and shock almost immediately gave way to anger and outrage… I was about ready to tear him apart, or at _least_ call the police on him…

He pointed in my direction, the pleased smile never leaving his face. His eyes seemed to be focused on something just over my right shoulder… He then raised his eyebrows knowingly, still pointing at… my shoulder…? No, it was definitely something that was behind me…

I turned around cautiously… only to see that murder weapon of a childish prank staring me in the face… It was lying on the carpet a few inches away from the back wall……

I lowered my eyes, contemplating what just happened… The knife didn’t disappear without a trace… it just…… passed right through me… like I was some sort of ghost.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I _did_ hear the blade strike something at the time, but I never would have guessed it was the wall behind me… Humans aren’t impervious to knives or stab-wounds… And we sure as hell aren’t intangible to them… So then how……?

I carefully picked up the knife and stared at it in total disbelief… Mike chuckled again; anyone could see he was wise to Ricky’s little stunt.

“Nice one, Ricky.”

Mike had regained his composure by now. He reveled in seeing me so confused but Ricky seemed like he could watch it for hours without getting the least bit bored by it. Mike turned his attention back to me as I was still looking over the apparent ghost knife.

“I’ll bet _that_ took you by surprise,” Mike remarked dryly.

By now, I’ve had it up to here with being left oblivious to their games. It was time for a _real_ explanation and I wasn’t going to rest until I had this whole thing grasped as well as they did…

“What the _hell_ is going on?!?! Somebody tell me!” My voice shook with fury and I was so tempted to hold that knife up menacingly to scare them into talking… Turns out it wasn’t needed though, and when I finally got my answer, I wanted to slap myself in the face for not being able to figure it out on my own…

“Well, you’re dreaming right now… in case you didn’t know.” Mike boldly gave up the answer that made me feel like a complete idiot…

I was _dreaming???_ Then of course the knife throw was painless… It’s literally the one explanation that furnishes logical sense to any possible circumstance… Oddly enough, that’s because logic does not exist in the dream world… But _this_ dream?… So vivid and sensible... and none of it real……? I was fully deceived by my own mind… and if these characters in my head hadn’t enlightened me, I would have continued the charade right until the moment I woke up… breathless from sheer astonishment.

“Yeah, and since you’re dreaming that means you’re completely immune and invulnerable to anything that would normally hurt you in real life,” Ricky proudly stated what I found rather obvious, but since he was younger than us, I gave him a pass and pretended like this was news to me… Mike appeared to be deep in thought however. His eyes darted around in different directions, almost like he was deciding whether he should tell me something or keep it to himself… He lifted his head and finally spoke up.

“You gotta be careful though,” he started restlessly. I heeded his warning and gave him my full attention, as did Ricky. All eyes in the room were on Mike as he voiced his alleged concern.

“Sometimes you can become unaware even when you think you’re totally aware. Like, there could be times where you’re in real life, but you’ll think you’re dreaming… and you’ll just walk right into a speeding car or something thinking you’re invincible and that it can’t hurt you.”

Mike needed to use a visual example to try and clarify this phenomenon, so I could tell he was having a tough time explaining it clearly… What he had to say right now intrigued me however, so I listened on.

“What I’m trying to say is… the lines of whether you’re awake or asleep to become invincible in the dream realm are incredibly blurry. It’s just not worth it to try doing something dangerous when you think you’re asleep ‘cause sometimes… you might really be awake and not even know it.”

Mike explained this slowly so I’d be able to hear and understand every word… He gauged my reaction to this piece of advice as Ricky looked at his brother pensively, and once again I was lost in thought… pondering what the elder brother just told me…

It was the truth… I was almost startled by how well this kid seemed to know me, but I remembered that this wasn’t another person… this was _me_ telling this to myself; my mind was helping me realize something important so I wouldn’t walk into danger with both eyes open when I assumed I was dreaming. Basically, Mike told me that the excitement of having this power of invulnerability might cause me to lose touch with reality… Dreams can seem _so_ real… and the brain can be easily fooled… If I felt powerless in real life as a 12-year old kid, then I might become enamored with the ability to do anything I wanted without fear of consequence… and the boundary confining this capability to the dream realm might be overstepped… I could have jumped off a building thinking I’d bounce back up, only to plummet to my death in reality…

He was completely and utterly right… This was one piece of advice that I couldn’t toss to the wayside. My mind or… this kid… might have just saved my life……

“Thank you for telling me that,” I uttered appreciatively, still a little taken aback by this new-found knowledge.

All the while, my head’s still spinning from Mike’s earlier disclosure… I replayed everything he said in my mind, and the resulting realization left me skeptical of the fact that these two boys were figments of my imagination at all……

………

Five minutes earlier, Ricky had just run out of the room to get snacks, leaving Mike and I alone to reconcile our differences. About ten seconds ticked by before the obvious question popped into my head, so I decided to ask Mike about it directly.

“So, where are your parents?” I inquired curiously, taking a seat on the admittedly comfortable floor. Mike thought for a second but shrugged his shoulders.

“Actually… I don’t know. I haven’t been born yet.”

For such a jarring statement, Mike was quite nonchalant about it… my poor brain was about ready to combust when I processed what he’d just said…… He wasn’t even _born_ yet??? Then _how_ was I talking to him and _why_ did he have the appearance of an honest-to-god 12 year old guy like me!?

Mike saw the baffled expression on my face and tried to elaborate on the bombshell he’d just dropped on me.

“Me and Ricky are both kids who weren’t brought into the world yet by natural causes. We’re scheduled to be born, like, ten years from now.”

As I’m trying to wrap my head around this insanely outlandish claim, Ricky returns to pretty much play darts _on my chest_ …… We all know what happens from here…

………

All of this information swirling in my brain has made one formerly elusive fact painfully clear… those two kids weren’t manifestations of my own brain power after all…

They were some sort of pre-born souls without current lives… visiting me in a dream. They had no corporeal forms yet but my headspace was fair game as a usable landscape for them to appear and interact however they wanted.

It was nothing short of incredible... and albeit questionable, the prospect behind their existence was breathtaking. Talk about an out-of-body experience…

When I finally put it all together, I tried not to act differently. They seemed to want to be treated normally, so who was I to react as though these two kids were essentially phantoms in my head? I softened up and tried to admit to Mike why I tried to trip him earlier…

“I umm… I dunno why, but I’ve kinda got this thing with pulling pranks on other people… if I don’t think they’ll see it coming then I try to do something to mess with them…” I tentatively expressed my “problem”. After all, these two seemed to really get me, so maybe they would understand my odd fixation with getting my kicks, so to speak…

Unfortunately, mentioning the incident again put Mike off. In hindsight, it was foolish to keep bringing it up… I guess the reason why I did was because these kids and I didn’t actually have anything in common now that I was beyond the influence of the dream and took hold of the reins myself. Mike tried hard not to roll his eyes and Ricky kind of just nodded in comprehension. I could tell that he’d be more open to talking about the subject, so I decided to get his input instead.

“What about you, Ricky? Do you… take it hard if people try to mess around with you as a joke?” Even more hesitance and uncertainty in my voice… Could I get out a single sentence without sounding unsure of myself? Ricky sat back on his bed and placed his hands behind his head while tilting his head back and forth with an open expression on his face. He seemed to be considering, but based on his laid back attitude, I had a feeling I knew what his answer would be.

“Nah, I don’t really mind it; everybody loves a good scare every once in a while. It’s no big deal you know as long as you know when to stop and nobody’s gonna get hurt.” He kept his hands behind his head after saying this supportively, in what must have been a relaxed position. Mike just watched on indifferently; he wasn’t sulking but he wasn’t contributing to the conversation either. After mulling something over, I smirked to myself when I finally came to a conclusion. I tried to lean back so both brothers were in my line of vision while I shared my findings with them.

“Guess we all have that in common then. I tried to trip and save you… and you guys scared the heck out of me with a knife. I bet all _three_ of us like to mess with people.”

Finally finding a common interest between us three, I felt like I actually accomplished something during my time there. Mike thought hard about my discovery and Ricky was surprisingly quick to agree. He exhaled a single breath in humor and smiled again.

“You know, I think you might have something there,” Ricky said while stroking his chin thoughtfully. To this day, I still don’t know if Ricky was just making up for his brother’s aloof and dismissive behavior or if he really was that affable of a person.

For whatever reason, I spent the next moment debating on what our group name could be… I perked up and excitedly relayed the results of my brainstorming with the two bros.

“We should call ourselves the ‘Perfect Prankster Pals’!”

My childish use of alliteration got a chuckle out of Ricky but Mike threw up a metaphorical wall upon hearing that. I definitely got his attention at least.

“Uhh, that’s never gonna happen.” Mike said insistently.

Ricky and I had a good laugh about that; Mike even joined in after a moment of his vehement protesting. Those two truly were a shining example of trustworthy childhood friends who always had your back but weren’t afraid to get on your nerves a little. Ideal companions… With them by your side, you could never feel lonely.

At this moment, I awoke from the blissful dream. Back in reality, hindsight was 20/20, and I realized that those two kids were extremely similar to my current friends at the time, Patrick and Dennis Bennett. Patrick was an average-built, wild-haired brunet kid who was 11 years old and had a penchant for the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. His brother Dennis was a slightly taller blond guy with straight hair of moderate length who was wise beyond his years at the age of 9 and greatly enjoyed all things Dragon Ball Z. These admirably friendly kids lived right next door to me in our apartment building, so I visited them on a frequent basis. It’s worth mentioning that their bedroom was identical to that of Mike's and Ricky’s in the dream… Despite all this, I still had the unshakable feeling that those two were telling the truth about their origins… I couldn’t have possibly imagined such realistic personalities between two people who seemed so much like the genuine article… could I……?

I was mildly upset for breaking out of the spell my mind had put me under to preserve the dream, but didn’t think much of it since I was confident that I’d see those two again. If I enjoyed their company enough, then I should have no problem crossing paths with them once more in the dream realm… especially if they really were ethereal beings visiting me before they were born on Earth…

But while I was sure that I’d see them again…… looking forward to that moment even…

… I never did after all these years……


	5. My Imaginary Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and Ricky were the driving force and main inspiration behind my methodology for managing an exciting fictitious lifestyle...  
> With motivation to back me and a resourceful, unrestrained mind that never succumbs to the impossible... my imaginary world was born.

I only ever dreamed about Mike and Ricky once…

… but their inviting and uplifting presence was essentially a paradise that I had glimpsed and was unable to return to. Their mind-blowing supernatural secrets and sociable demeanor that barely tipped the scales past normalcy was everything I could have hoped for in an idealistic reality…

I didn’t care that I was unable to condition my mind into seeing them again during my dreaming. I wanted more interactions with them, and I knew that I’d be able to utilize my imagination in such a way that I could design their lives to be just as real as Patrick and Dennis… Problem is, for reasons to be explained much later in this story, my mind had refused and denied me this luxury. Rather than recreate Mike and Ricky, I was only able to trick myself into believing in the existence of an imaginary younger brother to keep me company… Danny Landry.

I envisioned Danny as a relatively short blond kid with icy blue eyes and fairly pale skin. He was a healthy size for his age of 8 and tended to wear mostly clothes that were blue in color; shorts, wind pants, T-Shirts, long sleeve shirts, etc., but would occasionally go for a white or black selection. He wore blue socks with light brown sneakers and – oddly enough – was a mathematical prodigy. The kid was capable of solving problems involving algebra, algorithms, and a small level of calculus from the day he was conceived! I had never seen him perplexed by a math problem before, probably because at the age of 12, I had no idea how to stump him with my rather limited knowledge of the subject. Considering he was part of my mind, he got pretty much 80% of my math skills, leaving the remaining 20% for myself. But math wiz or not, the kid was still perfectly energetic and exuberant to take on the role of a pesky younger brother who you couldn’t help but appreciate having in your life.

I explained Danny’s existence to myself by believing my parents had adopted him. From then on, I mentally split my sizable bedroom in half to accommodate Danny’s living space while imagining a separate bed for him, and we pretty much lived normally for about a year; taking each step in stride and crossing any bridges if we came to them. For the time, my self-contained knowledge of Danny’s existence was working perfectly. However, as time went on, I began to doubt my reasoning for always being the one to control what Danny chose to say and how he chose to act. Things were feeling less realistic by the day, and if I didn’t do something to convince myself further, I was sure that I’d lose him to common sense just as I did with Mike and Ricky… Danny’s authenticity in my reality was being challenged, and I needed to act fast.

With my resolve weakening, I knew what I needed but not how to achieve it… I required some form of tool that I could use in order to determine what was happening in my imaginary world without needing to pull the strings on my own all the time… a magic 8-ball of sorts… And after employing more creativity, I developed the perfect substitute for one… I found a single six-sided die that I could roll on any surface after privately thinking of a yes-or-no question to myself for it to answer. I would roll the die, and depending on the side it would land on, I would instantly have the answer to my question and would be able to continue from there. Even numbers indicated a “yes” whereas odd numbers meant “no”. After practicing this for months, I became so skilled at it that it seemed like second nature to me… I was fully capable of engaging in a full-fledged conversation with Danny by initiating about 10 dice rolls in less than a minute and a half. As long as I carried this or any other dice with me wherever I went, Danny and I would be able to maintain constant communication and interaction.

I wasn’t going to endure another repeat of Mike’s and Ricky’s unwanted disappearance, and I knew that _he_ wasn’t going anywhere.

Over the months I’ve spent with him though, I’ve come to realize that Danny’s personality was much more akin to my own than what would be considered natural… The reason being that Danny had the same unhealthy obsession with pranking people that I had prior to his existence… Creating another monster with this complex was not my intention and could only end in tears, so I was able to consolidate all of my personality flaws in that regard and transfer them over to Danny. Part of me must have known that the fact he wasn’t real would make his need to prank others completely harmless and provided a win-win situation. This way, everyone would be happy… and I would serve as the mediator who kept Danny in check if things ever got out of hand. As his moral runner in life, I was able to establish the final character trait I needed in order for Danny’s existence as my younger brother to seem truly authentic: a good influence for him to look up to and a method in which we could both truly help each other out where we needed it most.

But even though Danny was your typical imaginary friend, and despite his involvement in my life allowing my personality to transition into adolescence more properly, there was still something missing that set him apart from Mike and Ricky……: the supernatural characteristics…

I figured it out at the age of 13 when Danny was now 9, and it’s also worth mentioning that — thanks to Danny’s exceptional math skills — I had him bumped up into the same grade as me in middle school. We both took on seventh grade together, promising to overcome any challenge that came our way, and things only became more interesting when I finally determined exactly how Danny and I could maintain supernatural aspects… _far_ more interesting indeed……

The power of my mind converted Danny and me into elementals. Danny gained the ability to manipulate water and liquid substances at will… while I granted myself control over the dangerous and volatile element of fire. Together, we were virtually unstoppable and could even summon the corresponding elements from thin air in order to confront bad guys or just fool around in times of peace. But in order for these powers to be put to good use, enemies needed to arise… Never one to give up on a desire, I conjured up a few mild adversaries that I would ensure were non-lethal for Danny and me to battle against in order to feel like heroes. These tame villains consisted of rather shoddy designs and never amounted to much in their schemes. I remember a glacial, humanoid beast with a single red pupil for an eye that glowed within a black crevice across the face, but no other facial features, named Iceor (pronounced as "eye-sore"). There was also a life-sized, wooden mannequin with angry, proportionate eye holes but no other facial features or even features in general. It didn’t even possess a puppet controller crosspiece and was completely mute… apart from the unearthly, echoing screeches it would sporadically emit in order to communicate. Its name was Physic Bender, and as the name suggests, he was indeed able to bend the laws of physics… but could never break them. I had begun the concept of one villain named Shape Master that was composed entirely of geometric shapes, but I never got anywhere with putting the design to use. I suppose “Gravity Falls” creator Alex Hirsch beat me to the punch with Bill Cipher’s character design.

Those adversaries were just to name a few, but trouncing foe after foe alongside Danny became a little too dull to maintain. So to present us with a challenge, I figured I should devise a few more serious enemies to level the playing field…

In the beginning, all I could summon with my supernatural ability over fire was a few sparks that could occasionally manifest into a brightly lit flame in my hand… Similarly, Danny was only able to produce lukewarm water droplets from his fingertips and would sometimes surprise me with a ball of pure water floating in his hand that could fill a common drinking glass half-way… Now, after a year of mastering our powers, I was able to generate scorching jets of red-hot flames and could aim them in any direction I chose. I was also capable of materializing a wall of flames to repel attacks with. Likewise, Danny could launch jets of either freezing or scalding hot water that he could bend and distort at will, and was capable of summoning up an impenetrable barrier of rushing water to protect himself… at the cost of always leaving himself drenched in the stuff after use. Needless to say, we had such a handle on our powers that it was impossible for us to lose in a fight. Even Physic Bender was easily countered by simply being taken by surprise via any form of sneak attack or ambush. Being made of wood, though charmed to be more durable than most, I was able to char him black if I ever caught him off guard.

They were all easy to beat, and that quickly became a boring lifestyle for both Danny and me… Reasonably aware at age 13 that life was full of challenges and was far from a cakewalk, I knew it was high time for a darker set of villains to make their grand entrances… Danny and I were about to have our work cut out for us thanks to yours truly……


	6. Playing with Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With my imaginary brother Danny to fill the void left by Mike and Ricky, and the constant downfalls of our mild enemies through intense, fictitious, and entertaining battles... it seemed I finally had my life fully under control.
> 
> But when Danny poses a question that throws the meaning of our leisurely lifestyle into question entirely, what could my precocious little brother be getting us into by having me grant his brazen wish?...

As everyone knows, true danger thrives in the hearts of evil…

Up until this point, the imaginary villains were feeble; mere catalysts for Danny and I to feel good about ourselves as though we were making a change in the world by protecting people from the wrath of these mysterious creatures… Until Danny and I both started to question what real threat these adversaries actually had to offer…

Who were we kidding? We weren’t saving anyone’s lives from these laughable excuses for super villains… We only ever fought them during our free time outside at Pleasant Valley daycare anyway… As soon as the recess started during the sunny afternoon of a fresh spring day, we made our way to the courtyard to blow away our adversaries with our collective might. Physic Bender and Iceor banded together to try and get the drop on us, but it was no use as usual… Physic Bender hovered overhead ominously and exerted its powers to swallow me up in the pavement beneath my feet. I was less than impressed when I saw the concrete slosh around as it softened and melted into a muddy, tar-like substance to smother me whole. Danny had his hands full with Iceor, who stood off in the distance and continuously thrust shards of ice at him from its chest cavity. Danny effortlessly deflected the frozen debris with a forceful wall of water spouts as I heated up the ground beneath Iceor… I may have been subdued and immobilized by Physic Bender’s sorcery, but I was far from disarmed. Iceor helplessly collapsed in a heap of melted water after falling prey to the heat of my flames. Danny then manipulated the remains of Iceor in snake-like tendrils like a water bender from the show “Avatar the Last Airbender” and encased Physic Bender in a sphere-like prison of rushing liquid, obscuring its vision and obliterating its concentration. With Physic Bender’s focus disrupted, I burst free from its snare of melted macadam and hurled a blazing jet of fire straight at its chest. Down for the count, Physic Bender let out the same eerie shriek of agony that Danny and I have both gotten quite used to by now…

Physic Bender’s wooden body blackened and chipped away in charred embers as it maneuvered its hands in circular motions to fade through a Technicolor portal and flee from the battle… In the aftermath, Danny and I praised each other on a job well done while I worked to dissipate the flames and clear the smell of smoke and burning wood from the air around us.

“Great job, man!” I exclaimed excitedly, holding up my hands in various directions to wave away the smoke from the atmosphere. The other kids around us tending to their own affairs with sports activities or other such games of pretend. “Even when they worked together they _still_ couldn’t stop us! They didn’t even know what hit them!”

Danny looked rather unsatisfied… almost like he was bored or that he didn’t exactly feel like he deserved the compliment.

“Yeah. Thanks, you were great too,” Danny said unemotionally. I was used to his somewhat croaky voice and knew it was natural for him to sound like he had a sore throat all the time… but he seemed distracted… I sensed something was wrong, so I offered him an ear to confide in.

“What’s the matter? You don’t sound too happy about it…” My beaming smile shifted to a look of concern when I saw Danny glancing off to the side disinterestedly. He still wasn’t willing to share an answer with me… Or maybe he just didn’t think of the right words yet.

“You should be proud, buddy. That was a pretty tough fight!” I proudly patted him on the shoulder in an attempt to encourage him, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he slowly reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. He handed it to me hesitantly… I was starting to get a little worried… Was he being bullied or something?... How could that even be _possible_ if I was the only kid who knew he even existed?

“Just look at that, okay?” Danny’s eyes met mine and I could tell this was serious… I dropped everything and took the note he handed me… I cautiously unfolded the paper… Danny’s face was cramping… it looked a lot like he was trying his absolute hardest to hold back a smile…

It was hard to be sure of what it was with all the creases, but there was a printed out image on the note… I struggled to make out what it was, and once I realized, I dropped the slip of paper from my hands as if it was actually on fire in real life. I reeled back in disgust and immediately emitted the most repulsed grunt I’ve ever made… Meanwhile, Danny’s finally through with holding back his amused grin and clutched his stomach from laughing hysterically at my reaction…

It was all just another prank… He wasn’t disheartened at all; he was just luring me into seeing his little gag-worthy joke. On that paper was a four-by-four inch image of a fly that was right in the middle of giving birth to maggots… and Danny was relishing in every second of my naturally nauseated response at that age…

“Gross, right?” Danny remarked fervently, grinning with glee like a madman. I shot an unamused look at him, confused as to how he even got access to that kind of imagery…

“Where the heck did you even _get_ that?!” I wasn’t angry, just momentarily ticked off. I have a photographic memory… and that disturbing image had burned itself into my brain, making my skin crawl…

“I found it on the computer. Wasn’t that hard actually.”

I was completely used to Danny pulling pranks on me by now, and this was no exception. He was certainly the unpredictable type; you never knew when he was genuinely feeling how he expressed or if he was just putting on an act to set his little plans in motion. But despite the deceptive nature of his pranks, he never stepped out of line… I knew he’d never take them as far as lying about death or putting me in harm’s way. The dream with Mike and Ricky had taught me that lesson, and Danny inherited it too.

A few moments later, Danny’s smile slowly faded but didn’t change to a frown… Instead, he just pursed his lips and looked up to me again.

“But seriously, Jay… aren’t you getting a li—ttle bored of the same old thing all the time? I mean, I kinda am…” The word “little” was drawn out to make himself sound less demanding, but he made his feelings perfectly clear… He wasn’t happy with the victory. In fact, he was tired of the superhero routine in general… I looked at him peculiarly, finding it a little hard to believe that he wasn’t having fun anymore…

“Bored?… Really?… You didn’t think that fight was a little harder to win than the other ones?” I tried to understand where he was coming from, but found it difficult for some reason… I couldn’t see what his gripe was, no matter how hard I tried to empathize with him. He just stuck his hands in his pockets, his bored expression unwavering.

“Not really…” Danny said matter-of-factly. “I mean, we just took ‘em down for the nth time in like two minutes. It’s nothing different, Jay.”

I gave him a confused look… I didn’t fully understand what he just said… Keep in mind, I was only 13 and this kid was a mathematical genius for his age of 9…

“For the what time? What word even is that?” I genuinely wanted to know, but Danny wasn’t as thrilled. He just face-palmed and held up his hands with his right hand’s index finger out upward like he was holding up the number “1” and his left hand’s index finger connecting to his right index finger midway and curved downward… The whole formation looked like a crude letter “n”.

“’Nth’ time, like the letter ‘n’! It means for the hundredth time and stuff like that. It’s an algebra thing because the letter ‘n’ stands for the unknown variabl—know what, never mind…” He was about to launch into a tangent explaining why “n” represents an unknown number from an algebraic standpoint, but knew it would go right over my head so he decided to just keep his mouth shut. He was sure I got the idea anyway, and I did… slightly.

“Oh… Well, what would make it more fun do you think?” I decided to get his input… Knowing that I was responsible at least in part for the way these villains operated… Maybe I could conjure something up that would strike his fancy and reignite his passion to help me slay these foes with our amazing abilities. Danny just mulled the question over for a second and held up his hand to look at it thoughtfully…

“I feel like our powers are just going to waste here… I dunno, I guess I kinda want more of a challenge or something?” He used the same hand to scratch the back of his head as if he was unsure of himself or nervous about bringing the whole thing up at all.

I took his words to heart and thought hard about what he told me… He was asking me to play with fire basically… It was dangerous talk — to bring in deadlier enemies for us to fight against… But I knew a handful of dark/demonic cartoon villains at that age… Slade and Trigon from “Teen Titans”, Yami Marik from “Yu-Gi-Oh!”, Scar from “The Lion King”, etc. I was sure I could whip up something more menacing… and if it made my little bro happy, then why not give it a shot?

I was lost in thought, until Danny snapped me out of my reverie by breaking the awkward silence.

“Hey, wanna play Water Ball and Heat Survivor?” Danny asked earnestly, as I was forcibly thrust back into "reality" by his innocent question.

“Huh? Oh, uhh… yeah sure. Go for it.” To say I was distracted at the time was an understatement, but it was nothing new to Danny. He knew I was a deep thinker…

Danny sprinted to a different area of the courtyard as I ran after him. Water Ball and Heat Survivor were both games that we made up as a way to practice developing and controlling our respective powers… The object of the Water Ball game was for Danny to generate a ball of water that he’d then throw to me… I would try to catch the ball of pure liquid, and the challenge of the game was for Danny to focus his powers on keeping the ball of water as solidified as possible in my hand so it wouldn’t fall flat. Likewise, the object of the game Heat Survivor was for me to exert my flame power over a steady range in front of Danny that he would walk towards… The challenge of this game was seeing how far Danny could traverse before the heat became too much for him and he would then use his own judgment to stop walking. We kept score by timing how long the water ball survived and by marking how many inches Danny was able to advance in the heat radius. Both games were always played separately for safety’s sake.

As I ran after him, I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight… but I was certain that I would be capable of generating the challenging opponent Danny craved… But we were just kids… How could we have known how rapidly the darkness in one’s mind could escalate until the childish fun and games we’ve come to love distorted into a horrific amalgamation of terror and mental devastation?

Danny was essentially requesting for me to build my own road to ruin… and my subconscious mind did _not_ take kindly to this behavior… Clueless to all that was about to unfold in the wake of my creations, the darkness was slowly beginning to take root... Eight years in the making, a devilish personification that was relentlessly ferocious beyond all scope of the imagination… was about to breathe life for the very first time.


	7. The Darkness Seeps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever gotten the unshakable feeling that you're ultimately setting yourself up for failure?...
> 
> Thrilled by a revolutionary new product idea that I developed as a kid, I proudly introduce Danny to the fruits of my creativity... But when everything falls apart in the blink of an eye and a crippling force threatens to divide and conquer, I slowly come to realize that I had essentially set a trap for myself... and the stakes were higher than ever...  
> For the first time, my own mind was truly beginning to work against me......

Akin to advancing levels in a video game, Danny and I were on the cusp of staring a greater challenge in the face… even if that face was completely covered in shadow…… The easier levels have been cleared, now it was time to pursue a new threat – one with a much darker agenda in store for my brother and I…

A couple of weeks later, I designed a concept that seemed quite juvenile but oddly practical… I was a budding artist growing up, and amid my doodles I designed a product called “Prize-in-a-Can”. The idea was that consumers could purchase various tin cans that were manufactured to be slightly larger than average. Each can held a desirable object inside (or even something immaterial), and it could be any physical object of the past, present, or even the future. The kicker?… Similar to a gumball machine you’d find at the super market, you never knew what you were going to get when you paid the cost… Even stranger than that, enormous objects could appear from the can that would be physically impossible to hold inside of it… Thanks to future technology, the use of an unknown chemical compound could allow items the size of satellites to erupt from within the tiny container, so buyers had best brace themselves before opening them…

With the randomized nature of Prize-in-a-Can, consumers could pay the modest cost of $20 to receive anything from a ball of lint to an authentic cruise liner… Special packs were custom-made to accommodate specific objects for those who didn’t want to leave their fate to chance, but the cost of those packs was either raised or reduced depending on the type of item. This contrived notion was my first attempt of many to start tinkering with the concept of command over physical matter… And since I imagined up the idea and its enormous arthropod mascot/director “Will Weevil”, I had full access and five-finger discounts to any in-stock Prize-in-a-Can item pack.

With unlimited resources like those going for me, how could I possibly end up on the losing side of any situation ever again?… Much to my chagrin, it was still _very_ possible… thanks to the age-old art of deception…

The company headquarters was located off to the side of the playground in Pleasant Valley daycare because I was an innocent but naïve soul back then and figured the convenience of everything being placed in the same vicinity would trump realistically needing to travel to different venues… I was anxious to show Danny my new “friend” who just popped out of nowhere, so I dragged him along with me to the imaginary building where Will Weevil resided. He trudged along in the mulch behind me as I made my way to the left of the jungle gym. It wasn’t nearly as sunny as usual… grey clouds had amassed above our heads… it appeared as though it was going to rain any minute.

“Jason, where are we going? They’re gonna call us inside soon,” Danny inquired, picking up the pace to try and hurry me along. He had no qualms about being left out in the rain; it was actually pretty fun for him considering how he was an exceptional case… But the counselors wouldn’t permit anyone in their care to be outside in the middle of a downpour… Being left vulnerable to the elements might make the kids sick and the parents would be livid. Danny enjoyed trying to manipulate the rainwater, but it wasn’t worth catching a cold over. Needless to say, swimming pools were a _blast_ for this guy.

I ignored his question in hopes of being able to reply with “we’re here”, but we were still a ways away… I needed to keep his interest for about twenty seconds longer.

“We’re almost there, promise. It’s like thirty more steps or something.” Wrong thing to say… He slowed down in disbelief and gawked at me after hearing that…

“ _Thirty?!_ ”

I saw his point… I picked up speed and started running off in the same direction. Danny followed suit, calling after me in protest.

“Hey, wait! Jay, we’re gonna get in trouble if we’re all the way out here when it starts pouring!”

He ran after me, but since I never held anything back at that age, my running was never anything less than sprinting… Upon reaching our destination, I abruptly stopped in my tracks, startling Danny and causing him to stumble as he scrambled to a halt. I marveled at the large building in front of me that only we could see… Danny was trying to catch his breath a little after nearly tripping over the mulch-filled yard. He looked up and surveyed the enormous structure.

“What—What am I looking at? Why’s this here?” He sounded impatient but more confused if anything. I could tell he was in for a surprise… I grinned and opened the doors, gesturing for him to go inside.

“You’re not gonna _believe_ what’s in here, Danny…” I tried to coax him, but he was only mildly interested… He was obviously still nervous about the counselors and their consequences…

“Seriously, Jason… I don’t wanna get yelled at,” He cautiously entered the building as he tried to convince me to leave… A contradictory action if I’ve ever seen one. I ran straight forward until a large silhouette came into view. Danny was mystified… the inside of the structure resembled a huge warehouse of thousands upon thousands of cardboard boxes, stacked on hundreds of rows of shelves. 6-foot-tall weevils in hazmat suits were lugging around the boxes and carefully stuffing Prize-in-a-Can cans with merchandise in the background. What really made him uncomfortable was the product mascot and director of the entire project… Will Weevil. Will Weevil’s design was anything _but_ ordinary… It was a mock-up of the weevil from the “Courage the Cowardly Dog” cartoon for some reason, only much wider and incapable of human speech.

Will Weevil rejoiced upon seeing me and Danny just stood petrified, unsure of what to think… Bugs never bothered Danny, but this thing could devour him if it chose to… Part of me wonders if he thought I brought him there to be that thing’s mid-afternoon snack as revenge for the fly and maggots prank… Nevertheless, Will Weevil hugged me tight with its six thin arms/legs while still using two legs to stand upright and I returned the friendly gesture. I then turned my attention to Danny, who was still trying to process exactly what he was looking at…

“Will, meet my brother. Danny, Will Weevil is the owner of all things awesome! Don’t worry, he’s harmless.” I introduced Danny to Will Weevil and vice-versa. I think Danny especially needed to hear that last sentence in order to make a decent first impression… Will Weevil turned to him and communicated in the only way it was capable of: by extending its tongue, flailing it in random directions, and hissing like a venomous spider. Will held out his hand/leg for Danny to shake.

“Uhh… Uhh, hi???” He stuttered nervously; his voice implying common courtesy but his facial expression reading as “What the actual hell???” He tentatively shook the weevil’s “hand”. I could see Danny was flustered, so I led him over to the shelves of Prize-in-a-Can packages. Danny waited until Will was out of earshot before voicing his concern.

“Jason…… Why?…” he asked in bamboozlement. I shrugged it off and gesticulated over to the rows of Prize-in-a-Can’s.

“ _This_ is why. Look at them all! And they have _everything!_ ” Danny beheld the boxes, obviously unimpressed since they were sealed shut, so I took one from the shelf and pried it open. Inside was a single tin can with a soda can tab on top of the lid. This was the conventional way to open Prize-in-a-Can’s without needing a traditional can opener. I opened my first random can by pulling the tab, and the contents spewed forth… It was a brand new, unsharpened no. 2 pencil... Not the most coveted of obtainable PIAC objects, but at least it was usable. Danny blinked in disbelief… He stared at that thing and then back to me as if I had grown two heads.

“You needed…… a pencil…? Fine, can we go now?” Danny was really uninterested and desperately wanted to leave before anyone realized we were missing. I knew that my unlucky pack pull hardly showed off what Prize-in-a-Can could really produce, so I raced toward Will Weevil one last time before we made our exit.

“Hey, Will, do you have something from the future that can take me anywhere I wanna go whenever I want?” Danny rolled his eyes dramatically at the outlandish question he just overheard, and Will Weevil stroked his pincers in thought… Finally, he snapped his two “fingers” and a hazmat weevil came running.

Will ordered the hazmat weevil to do something that I couldn’t understand since his speech was incoherent hissing and tongue wagging, but the hazmat weevil got the message and returned in five seconds flat with a Prize-in-a-Can custom pack. I have no idea what the price to the thing was, but in all honesty… it had to be somewhere in the millions… I scanned the label to the package: “Prize-in-a-Can CUSTOM”, beneath the label was another one that read “Teleportation Wrist Watch”.

I could hardly believe my eyes and thanked Will Weevil for everything, smiling genuinely at the astonishingly generous humanoid insect. At that moment, a peal of thunder echoed in the room from the opened door that Danny was irritably standing at. He gave me a stern look that let me know it was definitely time for us to depart… I quickly opened the can tab and a red and black, seemingly normal, plastic wrist watch ejected from within. I grabbed the watch and took off toward the door, with Danny’s headstart keeping him a constant six feet ahead of me as we dashed. The aforementioned rain was already coming down hard…

Now, in reality, I rushed back inside with all the other kids… But my mind wasn’t ready to call it quits just yet. In the realm of fantasy, this is what happened instead…

Danny and I were following the mob of kids back to the daycare center, but Danny was decelerating fast… I did the same so as not to crash into him while also fastening the new watch to my wrist, but I was dying to know why the heck he was slowing down… especially since he was so adamant about getting back to the building as soon as possible… I noticed he was shivering and looking around frantically as if there was someone watching us… I was scared for him; I had never seen him so genuinely unnerved before…

“Hey, why’d you stop?... Danny, you okay?” I gently shook his right shoulder, but he didn’t react at all… _Now_ I was worried…

“ _Danny?!_ ” I cried as I shook him roughly, trying to get him to snap out of whatever was holding his attention so firmly. This startled him and he slowly turned his head to face me… Mixed feelings of confusion and fear were welling up in his eyes. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost… or even the face of death itself… He finally spoke up; the color was slowly draining from his already pale face…

“Do you feel that?...” he muttered soullessly, his voice trembling…

“Feel what?! Danny, I swear, if this is another prank…” I warned, my eyes glinting in anger. Danny had proven time and again that he knew the boundaries of how far his pranks were allowed to go, but now I was starting to wonder… He’s great at worrying me to death, but during a thunderstorm while we were alone in the courtyard? This was a new low for him… Much to my surprise though, he went on the offensive to contest my accusation… He was likely telling the truth.

“I’m not joking! It feels so… cold… all of a sudden… Like the cold is _inside_ me not over me…” He braced his arms, shivering from this apparent cold sensation he was experiencing… It couldn’t have been the rain, and I felt nothing more than nippy winds. Baffled, the only conclusion I could draw was the most obvious one possible… He said he was cold and I wasn’t, so…

“Is it Iceor???… Is he doing this to y—?…” Before I could even get the words out, a faint shadow was growing larger behind Danny who was now facing me…… It sprung up from the ground in smoky wisps and wreathed itself around him, swallowing him up in what I’ll never forget as my first encounter with pure darkness… Danny screamed from shock, both surprised and fearful of the impromptu abduction…

“ _Danny!!!_ ” I exclaimed, a lump rising in the back of my throat. I was on pins and needles, terrified of what was unfolding in front of me. This was _not_ the type of ambush we were used to… This couldn’t have been Iceor’s doing, nor Physic Bender’s… Something else was out there, and it had my brother in its shadowy clutches!

Danny’s screams were muffled as the shadow dissolved his form before my eyes and sunk back into the ground, all while retreating away at a break-neck speed… I sprinted after it, hurling white-hot flames with all my fury… but it was no use… Fire doesn’t affect a shadow and the water falling from the sky certainly didn’t help… I was helpless, forced to watch as my brother was carried away by this unseen force… In no time at all, the shadow was clean out of sight… and I stood there reeling in horror from what I’d just witnessed…

It was not uncommon for adversaries to appear at inconvenient times and attempt an ambush or perform sneak attacks on Danny and I… we’d always break free, counterattack, and go on with our day…

This was different…… My brother had been stolen right from under my watch… and there was _nothing_ I could do to stop it…… Furious with myself for not being able to prevent it, I dropped to my knees and slammed my fist down on the soggy mulch… I yelled in anger and frustration… unable to bear the fact that I might never again see my brother… my potential savior… for as long as I live… It was hard to think clearly in that moment, but something clicked in my mind… I would _never_ conjure a villain that I would be unable to defeat… I am _not_ suicidal, so there’s no way that this is what my mind was going to force upon me… There _had_ to be a way to salvage this……

I retraced my steps and finally remembered… Prize-in-a-Can… I had _just_ gained a new watch that claimed it had the ability to teleport the wearer to any location of the wearer’s choosing… I analyzed the watch on my wrist… It was just an average digital wrist watch that told the correct time: 3:42 pm... Or so it would seem… I tinkered with its four side buttons a bit until I came to a setting that requested for me to input the full name of a human and the town in which they were currently located… It seemed as if doing so would allow me to teleport directly in front of the human in question. Swallowing hard, I prayed that the shadow didn’t transport Danny too far from here in the short amount of time I spent lamenting and fiddling with the watch… I typed in the name “Daniel Evan Landry_Waltham, MA”. The big “GO” button beckoned me, but I had no idea how teleportation actually worked… I was nervous to find out what would happen to me along the way… what I’d see and what I’d feel… But the urgency and determination to rescue my little brother snuffed out that fear.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed the button……

To my great surprise, I was instantaneously warped to a small clearing in a dense forest… The watch worked like a golden charm… It took no time at all and I didn’t even feel it… If I shut my eyes before every implementation, there apparently wouldn’t be any drawbacks… but it was too early to celebrate. For one, I had no way of telling if there were any hidden side-effects or not… and for another, Danny was nowhere to be found… I stood before a large oak tree that was bizarrely lined up with a set of other trees in a perfectly straight row… A myriad of similar full-grown trees were positioned in front of it and seemed to form an endless wave of enormous, wooden plant life… I inched closer toward the tree in front of me… Could Danny be _inside_ there?……

I observed the tree and the leaves surrounding it… looking for anything out of the ordinary… until I discovered a large patch of wood tucked near the right end of the tree that I couldn’t help but notice behind the bushes… The patch was secure, but it still seemed unnatural… Upon closer inspection, I eventually detected faded rune-like symbols etched into the wood… Something was _very_ off here…

I ignited my fists in flames, hoping they would last long enough to obliterate that wooden slab before the rain could douse them. I splayed my fingers and thrust my hand forward to unleash the torrent of fire… It enveloped the artifact that almost immediately caught fire. But strangely… it wasn’t burning… I used my other lit hand to try scorching the earth around it, but the soil wouldn’t even catch fire… the flames were not going to spread, especially in the rain… My patience at an end with this supposedly indestructible hunk of lumber, I glared angrily at the runes until realization began to wash over me…

… They were not unreadable… They were stylized English letters that had been rotated and flipped in order to jumble what they actually said…

I regained a bit of patience and tried to decipher the letters… until I finally cracked it. I’ve watched enough T.V. to know where to go from there…

“Serpent…”

Suddenly, the ground beneath me started to rumble… Reciting the pass phrase had slid the slab backward until it gave way to a tunnel leading underground… Preparing myself for the worst, I took a deep breath and stared straight ahead… down into the darkest depths of the shadowy abyss below…

“I’ll get you out, Danny…… I promise……” I solemnly stated, steadying my resolve...

With nothing to hinder my focus on rescuing my brother from his cruel captivity, I slowly but steadily traversed into the lightless tunnel and entered the shadows…


	8. The Evil that Dwells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter how overwhelming the tribulations… you can never turn your back on a member of the family……  
> As the malicious presence that captured my brother gradually reveals more of its hidden characteristics to its newest captive, both fear and relief take me by storm when I finally come to realize who or what is behind all of this terror… What is the crippling secret that destroys any chance this malevolent force ever had of conquering my brother and me in a world where darkness thrives and evil ambition is quite literally an open book?…

For the longest time, Danny and I have stood by each other… I had only truly known him for about a year, but whenever either of us were going through a rough patch in our lives… succumbing to fear and the growing doubt that things would ever get better… we would always be able to draw strength from each other and overcome anything that stood in our way of leading happy and fulfilling lives… Danny saved me from myself; taking on my burden of sating this sick obsession of toying with others and their emotions… wronging them for selfish, shameless entertainment when they never did anything to deserve it… My games would have eventually escalated into full-fledged crimes, and here he was – existing primarily to take all the heat for me… I owed him everything for that… He saved my future, and now it was finally time for me to return the favor.

There was no turning back… With Danny’s kidnapping repeating on a loop in my mind, I at least knew that no matter what kinds of nightmarish atrocities I’d confront in this hellhole, I would never forget who I was fighting for… I cautiously wandered further into the tunnel, treading lightly as I was unable to see two feet in front of me… There was no light source beyond that of the entrance behind me leading to the outside world… As if on cue, the wooden slab that permitted me access to this grotto glided back into position and sealed itself shut… trapping me inside the pitch-black cave of an underground tunnel……

With the overpowering darkness denying me any sense of vision, I ignited my fist in a condensed ball of fire to form a make-shift torch… The flickering orange glare playing over the hastily carved dirt walls certainly didn’t ease my tension any… but the path was straightforward and led down a single direction… As long as this wasn’t some form of trap, I knew I’d find my brother in no time… But I didn’t know what else I would find down there…… All I could say for sure was that a new enemy in my mind was residing in this demented place… manipulating the shadows to steal my brother away from me… But what was this enemy…? Was it a physical entity…? A manifestation of pure darkness come to life……? Was it someone I knew……?

Before I could learn the answers to any of these questions, all I could see next was the sickening grey scales of slime-covered serpentine warriors, peeling and thrusting outward from the walls themselves…… Six-foot tall snake-like fiends slithering along the rocky floor with demonic, humanoid arms baring claws that were gripping sword-like blades, poised to attack… I hadn’t realized until now that I had entered deeper into the shadows as the roughly sculpted walls gradually transitioned into wider, sturdier structures depicting accurate carvings of the very same snake creatures… They were summoned from the walls – probably as security guards…… Whatever this place was, it was definitely of an eccentric origin… Supernatural, even…

I recoiled at the sight of the unexpected welcoming committee, knowing full well that these were obviously serving as the underlings of this unknown threat… They shouldn’t be too tough to handle…

They stared at me callously with their austere, dead eyes… the coldblooded mentality within them giving way to territorial instinct… They stood there motionless as I gazed up at them, petrified… They were waiting for _me_ to make the first move… Another aspect that I wasn’t accustomed to with my own villainous creations…

I indulged them, taking them by surprise with a light show they’d never forget. By lifting the hand I was using as a torch and igniting the free one, I slammed both hands to the ground to produce a sea of flames that I then spread over the screeching hell spawns… They hissed in agony and drew their blades in retaliation… swinging them in random directions to try and cleave me in half. I dodged the slices by a hair with my adequate reflexes, but I definitely couldn’t keep it up for much longer… I had to do away with them quickly; if one or more of them injected venom into my body, I knew it would be the end of me…

Still taking swipes at me with their swords and lunging at me headfirst with opened fangs, I kept flooding my mind with images of Danny, thinking about how he needed me now more than ever before… Feeling like I had nothing left to lose and everything to gain, I shut my eyes and enveloped myself in a swirling pillar of fire, protecting myself from any further attacks... Helpless, the snake creatures were overcome with frustration, but I gave them no time to devise a way to penetrate the rapidly rising flames… I finally opened my eyes in bitter anger and launched the pillar forward as it expanded in size and power… The explosive red flames filled the room and burned the serpentine sentries with such overwhelming force that I almost cringed from hearing their cries of gut-wrenching agony as they were reduced to cindered husks of smoking scale and bone…

The way was finally clear for me to progress further down the tunnel that had now converted into a large cavern composed of gilded walls that oozed a thick substance resembling black slime… until I finally came across an enormous set of stone doors at the end of the cavern… All paths led to these doors; there was nowhere else to turn… this _had_ to be my destination…

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see what was on the other side… The underground lair and vicious snake guards protecting this adversary were already beyond what I thought I was capable of at that age in terms of designing darker villains… But it’s not like I had a choice in the matter… This heartless monster had my brother… ambushed him like a coward lying in wait… There _was_ no surrender…

Preparing for the worst, I clenched my teeth and scowled in rage… Trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of my blood boiling and adrenaline that accompanied it, I blew the doors wide open with an explosive blast emitted from both of my hands joined together… I finally reached the end of the line…… Taking a deep breath and raising my confidence, I walked inside and took in the sight before me……

I found myself at the threshold of a massive red chamber that was dimly illuminated by wall-torches and seemed to harbor a blackened floor that was crafted from a very glossy material… obsidian perhaps… The air was dry and oxygen seemed minimal… we were so deep down within the earth that it was slowly getting harder to breathe… The room was spacious and the walls and ceiling were carved from ores of jagged red stone… But the most memorable aspect of all…… was a king-sized throne composed of contorted human skulls resting high atop a set of stairs at the far side of the room against the west wall from the entrance… Seated atop this throne was a tall figure cloaked in black with smoky wisps slowly rising from the bottom of the robes… The hands were grey and slender with rotting flesh; claw-like fingertips were clearly visible resting on the arms of the throne… The entity was hooded with a face entirely covered in shadow to an impossible degree… the only things visible from underneath the hood were piercing red eyes that glared directly into my soul… I now understood the cold feeling of dread that Danny was experiencing from this unearthly creature… It was like I was face-to-face with the grim reaper………

As a 13-year-old, this ghastly being disturbed me… But looking back, I can see that it’s still a childish concept. The generic, one-dimensional nature of this villain… it honestly looked like a glorified wraith… If Emperor Palpatine and Lord Voldemort ever had a son, this guy would be him… But if I thought _this_ was frightening back then…… then clearly I hadn’t even _begun_ to scratch the surface of what true fear really felt like…… From clichéd sorcerer demons to sadistic masked humans who stalked your every move and wanted to see you bleed and suffer in the worst ways imaginable… cruelty untold… lies unspoken…… betrayal forever……… This little “ordeal” hardly prepared me at all for what I was really about to endure…

I stared up at the creature, uncertain but fuming all the same… I gave it one warning only…

“Give me my brother _back!"_ I demanded slowly and severely… The cloaked demon didn’t react. It simply narrowed its glowing eyes at me as something began to come into view from the shadows behind me… My ears were assaulted by muffled cries of terror as I whirled around to be met with Danny, snared in the same shadows that I saw carry him away to this place… They bound and gagged him; his ice blue eyes pleading at me to break him out of his imprisonment… He was dangling from some sort of thick, tangible thread of darkness that held him a few feet above a pit of what appeared to be sizzling, corrosive acid…

I stood frozen in fear; a sharp chill ran up my spine… I knew right then that we were _both_ at this monster’s mercy……

Then, like a whisper in my ear, an echoing hiss of a voice penetrated my very core… The creature had entered my mind, simply as a calling card… Amid the hiss of echoing feedback, it uttered a single word that I had never heard before, but I knew right away what the word had meant… I finally had a name…

… Zorek…

Not one to miss a beat, I picked up right away that these cruel actions were undoubtedly put into effect to cloud my judgment and have me lash out in blind fury… It wasn’t a new concept to me; it was something that Physic Bender occasionally dabbled in during his schemes, and I had seen it countless times from animated villains… The imagery I was exposed to was unsettling, but it wasn’t enough to break my will… I calmed my troubled mind and realized a groundbreaking discovery about this brand new foe who threatened my brother and me… He may have been more formidable than Physic Bender and Iceor, but he was _still_ conquerable… Because I _still_ had an ace in the hole that he could never hope to mimic as a generic tall, dark, and creepy villain… My trump card would always be my unwavering determination to save others… the problem with villains who are simply _pure evil_ and nothing more is that there is no real motivation — no aspired goal that comes directly from the heart — they simply commit evil for evil’s sake… and that means they will _never_ be able to truly become adequately invested in their vie for victory. There is no vendetta, no grudge, and no real _reason_ for doing all of this to Danny and me… other than to hurt us because that’s what Zorek lives for.

He was a highly dangerous enemy… but he lacked a key component that only true villains possess. And as long as it remained missing, he could _never_ defeat us…

At this point, Zorek must have sensed that I was gaining courage and made a last-ditch effort to put a stop to it… He rose from his deranged throne and swiftly hovered toward me… a bizarre, low-pitched whooshing sound accompanied his movement… I braced myself for the coming impact, but I also knew that I needed a way to get Danny out of that shadowed snare so he could manipulate the acid beneath him and use it against Zorek… This demonic sorcerer didn’t even know what we were capable of with our powers… and that made him all the weaker in the long run.

Zorek’s hands trembled violently under the strain of dark energy as he finally went on the attack… Volatile bolts of blackened electricity flooded forth from his fingertips and unseen mouth under the hood… The speed and force of the electricity caught me by surprise… I was hit dead-on… The electricity surged through my body as I screamed bloody murder and dropped to my knees from the pain and jolt of the unfamiliar experience… It felt like I was literally struck by extremely powerful lightning… Zorek didn’t make a sound, but I could hear Danny crying out my name in concern even through the muffling under the shadows that were keeping him silent. Zorek readied another deadly blast, but this time I knew what he had up his sleeve… I had to be careful and not go directly for Zorek, or he’d surely dip Danny in the acid sweltering beneath him if he took so much as a single blow… I needed to think fast, or I could end up losing Danny even if I took down this living shadow in the end……

At this time, Danny was behind me and Zorek was in front of me… so I generated fire in my palm and brought my hand to the ground… I waited for Zorek to launch his next electric shock and dashed forward to evade it, leaving behind a large trail of flames in my wake. I continued dashing around Zorek, trying to encase him in a ring of fire, but he anticipated my plan and took to the air to avoid being encircled in flames. This worked to my advantage; he was finally out of my way… I took this opportunity to propel myself forward by discharging a heavy amount of flames from my palms and launched myself toward Danny, who was still dangling over the acid.

Zorek saw what I was doing and bristled in rage… He conjured up such a vast amount of black electricity that it had begun to surge around his cloaked body… Wasting no time, he fired it all at me in a gigantic mass of lightning… As I lunged toward Danny, I hurled a white hot flame with my free hand at the dark thread holding him up… but to no avail. My flames can’t affect these shadows…… The momentum from my fiery propulsion managed to let me cross over to the cliff on the other side, but that was the least of my problems… The enormous mass of lightning was headed straight for _Danny!_ Enraged, I threw my hands outward and generated a scorching wall of flames from just above the acid; spanning a height that nearly reached the ceiling… Fire and electricity can’t exactly deflect each other, so the flames only softened the blow slightly… Danny was still hit with a lot of volts and his muffled screams of agony were beginning to become more than I could bear…

I must work well under pressure, because a moment of brilliance occurred to me in that instance of desperation… Flames can’t burn away shadows… but can a shadow be cast without any light?… It was a huge gamble… by removing all sources of light from the room, I could either erase the shadows that bound Danny, _or_ I might convert the entire chamber into pitch-black nihility and Zorek would have the unending darkness to swallow us whole… and he would win……

But I had to do something, and I thought it was a risk worth taking…

“Danny, get ready to drop!” I commanded firmly, but Danny had no idea what was coming next… Zorek seemed to remain unperturbed, but it was difficult to tell when you couldn’t see his face… He had already taken aim and was charging up another excruciating blast for Danny…

I automatically extinguished the flames in my hands, as well as all of the torches on Zorek’s walls that kept the room lit… Apart from the incredibly faint glare of Zorek’s black, darkened lightning, the room was pitch-black… My vision was just about worthless now; Zorek’s power didn’t falter, and yet… somehow I knew this was going to work…… because I had finally learned to embrace the darkness……

I heard Danny screaming as if he was falling from a great height… Then I heard rushing water from out of nowhere and the screaming had stopped… I knew deep down inside that Danny was successfully freed, and that he propelled himself out of danger with torrents of water just as I did with my bursts of fire… Zorek was beside himself… He most likely knew that victory wasn’t in his future…

Checkmate, Zorek…

With his soldiers defeated, his hostage safely out of harm’s way, and his resources diminished to virtually nothing… it was game over for this “ultimate challenge” of a villain. Without a moment’s hesitation, I generated just enough light in my palm for Danny to see his target… With fiery determination in his own resentful eyes, he levitated the mysterious acidic liquid from the crevice below and set the hovering Zorek in his sights…

But Zorek wasn’t about to accept his fate quite yet…… Before Danny could hurl the acid at the monster responsible for all this trouble, Zorek made a nosedive straight for me, dissolving into mostly a gaseous state in form… Danny couldn’t react with the weight of the dangerous chemicals in his control, but I flinched in apprehension as Zorek opened his gaseous mouth in a sinister and distorted sneer and wrapped his now tangible fingers around my left wrist in a vicious death grip… Danny’s eyes widened in fear while I yelped and tried my best to pry Zorek’s fingers loose, igniting my own body in flames to hopefully ward him off… It seemed to work, as he reverted back into pure smoke within seconds and plunged downward, far below the solid ground in front of me… he was gone without a trace…… I rubbed my wrist and twisted it around to alleviate the pain and pressure it just endured from that cretin’s ruthless grasp…

Danny was about ready to drop the acid and make a beeline out of there with me… but there was no telling what Zorek would do now that he was desperate… we could _not_ risk him returning to finish what he started once the threat to his life was dispelled…

“Wait, hold it! Just keep holding that up, he might come back…” I held out my hand in protest to stop Danny before he relaxed his muscles and let all of the acid spill to the ground… Danny’s knees were starting to buckle from the immense weight of the caustic fluids… It was all inside that huge pit; there was enough of it to fill a large swimming pool at least…

“Okay, but Jason…… I can’t hold this forever!……” Even his voice was strained; he really was struggling with that… I had one last job and that was to get us out of there safe and sound… I messed around with the teleportation watch’s settings a little more and found one that seemed to be requesting for me to input a full address…

“I think I can get us home…” I said distantly as I worked with the frustrating double-button keypad… With 26 letters, 10 numbers, and three punctuation marks all in that one cycle, pressing one button to scroll through each character was a pain in the neck… But considering it gave me the ability to warp to anywhere of my choosing… I thought it was still a pretty good deal.

“How?…… Where even is this place?…… Are you gonna—rrgh… call the police or something?……”

The acid continued to float in the air some feet away from us… It didn’t look like Zorek would be coming back, but I still wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t just slinking around in the shadows somewhere, waiting for our next mistake… I finally entered the address to Pleasant Valley daycare in Waltham, MA. However, there was one huge problem with using this watch to get home… I had no idea if it would be capable of transporting us _both_ back, and leaving one of us in that chamber would be easy pickings for Zorek if he did happen to stick around during the aftermath…

The watch claims to transport the _wearer_ to any location… I guess this loophole was as good as any in this situation… I unfastened the watch and walked up to Danny…

“Danny, I know this sounds crazy but I need you to wear this watch with me.” I said decisively, holding out the watch to show him… Danny glanced at it it and shot me a look… He couldn’t believe I would be joking at a time like _this._

“Is that, like, your can prize thing?! _Dude!"_ He was not in the mood for nonsense… I understood his skepticism, but he _needed_ to trust me…

“I know, it sounds unbelievable but it _works!_ It’s exactly how I found you _here._ Here, just let me—” I tried to make a compelling argument, but ended up just trying to slip the watch onto his right wrist myself without fastening it… Touching his arm must have made him lose some concentration because a small percentage of the acid fell to the floor and sizzled as it slowly corroded the glossy ground. I took my own wrist now and tried to join it together with Danny’s so the watch would fit over both of us… I wrapped it around our wrists as best I could and prepared to press the flashing GO button.

“Close your eyes, okay?” I was glad that I thought ahead to warn him beforehand… But Danny was hesitant.

“What? If I do that then there’s no way I can hold this up anymore, Jason, it’s already spilling!” He was getting more and more frantic the longer he had to hold up the lethal acid. I knew that giving him a rest was reasonable… We had no use for it anymore anyway.

“That’s fine, you can drop it now,” I assured him, still with my finger on the GO button.

Danny relaxed all his arm muscles and allowed the acid to plummet to the ground… We quickly took a few steps back to make sure none of it would splash on us… With that load off his shoulders, Danny closed his eyes as instructed, and I did the same as I pressed the GO button…

Within seconds, I felt the cool rain trickle onto me and the breezy winds whipping at my face. Danny must have felt the same and opened his eyes before me… He was shocked; finding himself unable to believe how this could be real… One second we were in a demon’s cave lair, and the next… we’re back at our daycare building, standing right at the front door…

“ _Now_ do you believe me?…” I asked him in a serious tone. It wasn’t an “I told you so”, but rather an important question to ensure we were both on the same page with how reliable that silly little watch really turned out to be…

Danny just turned to me in disbelief and nodded his head, still stunned by the fact. I separated our wrists and fastened the watch back onto my own… This thing was way too powerful to ever have it leave my side… If it ever fell into the wrong hands, god knows what could happen…… But Danny and I still needed to make up a story about why we were outside in the rain this whole time when all the other kids were called inside… especially since we weren’t even waterlogged.

“Don’t think they will though…” I said despairingly, pointing up at the building… It’s not like we could tell the counselors this story and get out scot-free… You just survived being kidnapped by a demented evil sorcerer in a cave? That’s great. Have some juice and graham crackers while we call up your mom and dad so we can all have a nice little chat together.

“We can say we were playing hide and seek with another kid and that we hid way out over the fence near the trees where nobody else was… Really big trees so we didn’t really get much of the rain… And the seeker was just some kid we didn’t know.” Danny was already weaving up a web of lies in his head to make up a logical excuse for why we weren’t in the courtyard this whole time…

I wasn't big on lying… I sucked at it, honestly. But since the lie only needed to be told in my head because I was already led inside in reality, then what’s the harm? Some lies never hurt anybody, and this would be one of them…

But not all lies can be rationalized and not all liars have good intentions… Zorek was indeed a darker enemy that I’m sure gave Danny a run for his money… Problem is… _he_ never ended up being the hero… he was helpless the entire time and I needed to come to _his_ rescue… Could this mean my mind was punishing him for suggesting that something so dangerous be brought into the picture in the first place?… Even so, I thought Zorek would be the end of it… but I couldn’t have been more wrong…… Zorek was a typical, straightforward, and downright evil personality… His failure was inevitable… But what about the villains who cheat and deceive to get the upper-hand?…

With Zorek’s weakness discovered, he was hardly a threat anymore… but as long as I was pulling the strings, I could always find ways to up the ante… It’s here that I made the mistake of designing a handful of new antagonists that used _deception_ as a weapon instead of something as infantile as shadowy tendrils and electric discharge… Slowly but surely, my mind was gearing me up toward the true challenges in life… and my imaginary world continued to grow more elaborate by the day…

It wouldn’t be long before my true enemy would sow the seeds of deception into my trusting mind and send me spiraling into a state of incredulous despair… Something was coming for me… and it would want nothing more than for me to burn at the stake with my eyes and mouth bleeding profusely from the irreparable damage caused by the pointed objects that would be mercilessly shoved within them… and the best part for him… is that I would be cursed to live through _all_ of it……

My future was coming… and there was no stopping it…… how I would choose to deal with it, however, is another story in itself… and we’ll get there.


	9. Hell's Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just how trusting were you as a child?… Would you give everyone the benefit of the doubt? Were you an eternal optimist with an innocence that could stand the test of time?…  
> You never know what diabolical demeanor could be hiding beneath the smiling face of a coldhearted liar…
> 
> My first betrayal was actually one that I brought upon myself… Read on to find out exactly how it went down and the effect that this deceiver ended up having on my mental state when the smoke clears and the twisted truth is revealed…

Trust is something that must be earned with time… but the innocent will forever be known to extend it willingly and without so much as a second thought. If the ones placing their trust have never suffered unduly at the hands of someone they had faith in, then they have no reason to believe that people who seem to like them could harbor sinful intentions behind their smiling faces…

The intense encounter with Zorek left Danny and I somewhat on edge, but it wasn’t at all a traumatic experience… We saw him as just another enemy who was overcome by our teamwork… even if he did turn out to be more resilient than most. Danny and I continued to bask in the sunlight of the spring time. It’s worth mentioning that his childish pranks were beginning to grow more sophisticated the more he experimented, but thankfully they never showed the slightest sign of causing anyone any harm. At our apartment building, we both shared a T.V. monitor in our bedroom. Oddly enough, when a specific channel was turned on, it triggered a transmission of the camera that was situated at the ceiling of the building’s entrance where someone would walk in and use either a key or call someone over the intercom to gain access to the building’s interior. This was a very real fact, and I remember the feed being grayscale as well. Danny and I discovered this one day when channel-flipping… Needless to say, he saw it as a golden opportunity to take his pranks to the next level.

I’ll never understand why we tenants were allowed access to the transmission that was designed to be reviewed by security personnel, but Danny didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak. He somehow got a hold of a bottle of Vaseline and would walk down to the bottom of the building to completely coat the doorknob with the slippery, clear substance… He’d then run back upstairs and watch the mishaps unfold on the television screen while I either spent my time building “Yu-Gi-Oh” card decks, drawing and cutting out characters to use as fragile, two-dimensional action figures (this was a hobby that stopped when I was around 10), or using the new Windows XP computer I received as a Christmas/birthday gift. Having a birthday that falls within five days of Christmas means you will sometimes receive one rather expensive gift that spans both occasions, and this was definitely one of them. I had used my father’s Windows 2000 computer as a kid, mostly for Microsoft Paint, but I was still learning how to operate this more modern piece of computerized technology. As for Danny’s doorknob prank, it wasn’t too difficult to find the work-around… You’d simply need to hold your hand inside part of your shirt and use it as a makeshift glove to get the door open. But it was still a hindrance, and once the landlord took it up with him by informing our mother of his harmless fun, he had to quit cold turkey. My mother didn’t actually know of Danny’s “existence” and this encounter never took place, nor did Danny’s Vaseline prank… but in my mind, they did happen and she knew he was quite real. It was the only way he could be provided for, so I imagined that she told him he needed to stop doing those things outside of our apartment room since we didn’t own that part of the building.

Danny took it well, knowing he crossed a line… But he was still a prankster at heart and continued to surprise me by finding more new ways to mess with people’s minds for his own pleasure. One of his more brilliant pranks that I actually gave him a lot of credit for… was a simple wooden plank from our daycare that we were allowed to take home after a supervised activity about painting wood. He took an unpainted slab of wood home with him and taped what could only have been a real circuit board to one side of it… The circuit board had a light switch attached to it and a few soldered wires. By simply looking at it, one could never discern what it was supposed to do… I saw Danny working on it, but he refused to tell me what it did… he obviously planned to test it out on me first. I distinctly remember one day that, while I was organizing my Yu-Gi-Oh cards, I kept hearing this incredibly faint — almost inaudible — beeping noise going off periodically throughout the day… I asked Danny if he heard it but he said he hadn’t with a very believable face… That infuriating beeping went on for the whole… damn… night… I thought I was going crazy, until the next day, Danny showed me what his little gadget was really for. Turns out that all the circuit board did was emit a very soft beeping noise once every four minutes… It also had a switch to turn the device on or off. Danny admitted to hiding it under my bed and pretending he didn’t hear it. It was designed to make someone wonder whether or not they were even hearing the annoying noise at all, and they would think it was all in their head… I asked him how the heck he ever got his hands on something so hi-tech, suspecting that he found it in Prize-in-a-Can. He frowned and told me he just looked up a video on how to make one online and built it himself… He apparently got the parts from RadioShack when we all went clothes shopping since the store was only a few buildings over and he brought his own money that day. I was still shocked that he was even capable of making that thing, but considering I always saw Danny in my mind as a mathematical genius… maybe he had some electronics expertise as well?… I still can’t imagine a 9-year-old being able to safely use a soldering iron, much less keep from burning the soldering wire… To be fair, I had no idea what the construction requirements were for that thing at my age, so I must have imagined that Danny had hand-made something that I didn’t know was impossible for a 9-year-old to accomplish… I have to say though that Danny’s adamancy in refusing to have anything to do with Prize-in-a-Can was always something I found pretty funny… He was probably afraid he’d open one of the cans and rubber snakes would fly out, thinking it was an elaborate counter prank by me. Danny may have pranked the hell out of everyone we ever met, but he would always be on his guard to avoid retaliation…

Bearing this in mind, I find it surprising that he ended up the way he did……

A few days later, Danny and I went to visit our father’s house for the weekend as per usual. We didn’t _always_ stay cooped up inside mind you, so since it was a particularly nice day out, Danny and I went outside to enjoy the fresh air and warm weather. I rode on my Razor scooter and he rode his bike, but we made sure to stay close to the driveway. Danny was the sort to perform stunts while I envisioned imaginary obstacle courses for myself to overcome. We rode down to the middle of the block in our small neighborhood, when we came across another boy riding his own scooter… He honestly looked like a fused combination of Danny and me… He appeared to be between both our ages, maybe about 12… He was shorter than me but taller than Danny, had a light peach skin tone, curly sandy-blond hair of moderate length, and greyish hazel eyes. If I recall, he was wearing a white T-Shirt, long black shorts, and dark colored sneakers. He noticed us coming up to him and slowed down a bit on his way toward us to prevent a collision…

“Hey, what’s up?” He asked us in a friendly tone as he slowed to a stop. I was slightly more introverted than Danny was at the time, so he was the first to reply.

“Hey, just riding around near the house. You?” We both stopped now to chat with the mysterious kid who appeared to be our father’s neighbor.

“Sweet, me too. You guys new in town or something? I’ve never seen you before.” His friendly disposition didn’t wane after the initial greeting, and by the way his eyes narrowed in thought, he seemed to be genuinely searching his memory for any recollection of us. I figured it was finally my turn to speak up after that.

“No, we’re actually just visiting our dad… Our parents divorced, so…” I explained hesitantly, trying not to unearth any repressed memories of the day they split up. The kid seemed to understand though and showed his sympathy.

“Aw man, that bites… Sorry…” He seemed to really care and it appeared that he wanted to get to know us better… I figured there weren’t that many kids like the three of us riding around dad’s neighborhood, so he must just be happy to have someone to talk to. By now, he actually took his hands off the scooter’s handlebars and rested his arms on top of the handlebars instead to keep the scooter in control but also parked. It gave the impression that he was going to stick around for a bit and it appeared he was doing just that.

“I live right around the corner with my two older bros. ‘Name’s Andy.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to show the direction in which he lived and held out his fist for us to bump when he gave out his name… I wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing at first, but after Danny bumped it, I just repeated what he did… figuring he knew what was going on.

“Cool, nice to meet you. I’m Danny,” Danny said in an equally friendly tone while holding up his hand in a “hello” gesture.

“I’m Jason,” I said flatly but while offering up a smile. Danny and I were normally very cautious about revealing our powers to others, but this guy had a reassuring presence about him… Danny was the first to extend his trust and most likely assumed this kid would be fun to hang out with whenever we were visiting our father’s place for the weekend. So, he gave the already welcoming newcomer another reason to want to remember us.

“Hey… Wanna see something cool?” Danny goaded him, smirking knowingly. I glanced at him nervously, knowing what he was about to do… It wasn’t like Danny to just show off our powers to random people… What if this guy got scared and called the police on us? It was too late though… Andy had taken the bait.

“Okay,” he said interestedly, shifting his head slightly and straightening himself to give Danny his full attention.

“Danny, umm…” I cautiously tried to tell him he shouldn’t, but Danny wasn’t listening… He’d already held his hand out toward an empty patch of the street and launched a small stream of water that was akin to that of a squirt gun from his palm. Andy’s eyes widened in shock and amazement as he blinked a few times to process what he’d just witnessed…

“ _Whoa!_ How’d you do that!?… Dude, you gotta teach me! Was that like your sweat or something?…” Andy was frantically trying to make sense of the situation, and I just shook my head in disappointment… At that point, I guessed we were better off not keeping any secrets from our new friend. I held my hands up in surrender but Danny told me not to worry. To make his point clearer, Danny turned his hand over so his palm was facing the sky and generated a small plume of water from it, maintaining its flow and consistency for a good minute or so. Andy just watched on in wonder.

“Nope, I can control water. Jason can control fire, and we both secretly use our powers for good to save people and stuff.” Danny proudly stated, wrapping his arm around my shoulder in the process.

One of us had the other two completely fooled that day…… Danny kept beaming at Andy, who just couldn’t take his eyes off Danny’s manipulated water… He slowly brought his hand up to his forehead in shock, pushing the hair that was covering it upward slightly. His eyes were wide and lowered in puzzlement… He then looked straight at us; his voice was shaky with excitement.

“Dude…… That is _sick_ , you guys are like super heroes or something!? Can I tell my brothers?”

Danny and I exchanged nervous glances… It’s one thing for this kid to know but he couldn’t be spreading the information…

“It’s… kind of a secret… We don’t want the adults finding out from anybody or it might mess everything up…” I informed him tentatively. He simply nodded his head and seemed to understand.

“I bet I know who’d win in a fight,” he remarked, grinning and looking us both in the eyes one after the other. Danny and I looked at each other again – he just chuckled silently while I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Well, I guess we’re aware now that Andy knows 1st grade science…

“Hey look, I gotta go… My bro Anthony’s waiting for me but… we should totally catch up later. Uh, which house is your dad’s?” He definitely seemed to be in a hurry, but Danny certainly succeeded in piquing his interest in getting to know us… Danny gave him the address.

“Awesome, we can meet up later. I’ll ask for you guys – Danny and Jason, right?” He said as he gripped the handlebars again and prepared to ride away. I nodded and Danny said “Yup.”

“Cool, I gotcha. See you later!” He said, waving as he rode down our hill of a street in the same direction he was heading before he’d run into us along the way.

“He seemed pretty cool. Super nice,” Danny said to me in a chipper tone, and I actually had to agree… Weird that we just happened to run into him like that though…

Weird indeed… quite a convenient coincidence, seeing as we didn’t even live near that part of town… The fact that he noticed Danny and his powers at all meant that the kid was a figment of my imagination… which could only mean he held some sort of significant role in both of our lives…

If only my mind had let me notice how his eyes had darkened and flashed a golden gleam as his mouth contorted into an evil grin on his way down the street……

………

The following events are hazy in my memory, so I’ll try to recall them as accurately as possible. On our first Monday back at the daycare center after we’d returned home from our father’s house on Sunday night, Danny and I were getting ready to play Water Ball and Heat Survivor when we noticed someone familiar near the playground in the courtyard… He appeared to be watching us intently… It was a cloudy day and the wind was fierce… I could tell from the ambiance alone that Danny and I were in for a hell of a day…

We approached the boy who we caught watching us and were both shocked to our very core to find it was none other than _Andy_ … He seemed exactly the same as when we met him last weekend, only his hazel eyes had now taken on a burning golden glow… He was smiling at us, but it wasn’t the same cordial smile he wore when we first met… Something about it seemed… sinister in nature… Danny could hardly believe it was the same person… a chill ran up both of our spines and Danny seemed to be swallowing nervously in fear as he drew closer to our friend from the day before…

“Andy?… That you, man?…” He asked as calmly as he could muster… But it was no use… Andy started walking over to us himself… his expression unchanging… I couldn’t believe this was happening to us…… Why would he suddenly turn _evil???_ He seemed so nice to us… I just didn’t get it…… My naiveté diminished after that day… the innocence started to fade… and I realized that I’d taught myself a _very_ important lesson in the fragile nature of trust…

“Yeah, it’s me…” Andy’s voice was no longer light and sociable… now it was slower and menacing… Why the hell was I getting so weirded out by an 11-year-old?…… I’ll tell you why… It was because for the _first_ time since I could remember… I had been completely lied to by someone I genuinely trusted……

“Are you… okay?…” I asked, grasping at straws… hoping against hope that maybe he was just possessed by an enemy or something… This kid _couldn’t_ have been out to get us… there’s just no way…… Andy chuckled maniacally at my inquiry… There was no getting through to him… He was never our friend… and I knew we were screwed……

“You were _so_ easy to fool…” His simple but brutal response chilled me to the bone… He all but confirmed what Danny and I suspected… We had no idea what this guy was capable of… We shared our most guarded secrets with him and he never revealed _any_ of his… He really did play us for absolute fools…

The next thing I know, two other boys slowly rose out of the ground, flanking Andy on both sides… My jaw dropped and Danny nearly fell to his knees in shock when we realized that these two boys were the spitting image of Andy… but of different ages… The one on his left appeared to be my age and the one on his right was clearly older than all of us… Maybe 16 or 17… Not only was this person deceiving us… He had allies who looked exactly like him… His “brothers” no doubt… and if that wasn’t enough, this new turn of events had actually left Danny and me outnumbered… and outplayed…

“Sickening… that you'd place so much trust in him.” The brother who was my age said in a cool, deeper voice than his younger brother’s.

“You must know nothing of the real world…” The eldest brother remarked with a more venomous, sinister voice that melded with that of a teenage one…

“You never did meet my brothers… I knew you’d be gullible enough not to ask.” Andy spat with a sneer… The whole intimidating scene was a fright for sure, but I didn’t understand it… _Why_ betray us?… What did he have to _gain_ from all this?… What was the _point?_ ……

“… W…W—why?… Why would you do this?…” I stuttered at first but finally found my voice… I needed an answer… But would he even bother to give me one?… To my surprise, for someone so deceitful, he didn’t have anything more to hide…

“It’s what we do… We scour the Earth for saps like you who believe in anyone that can fake an emotion. We _live_ to _lie_ …” Andy informed us cruelly… His two brothers took a few steps forward to introduce themselves…

“Anthony.” The one who was my age said tersely.

“Adamn.” The eldest proclaimed in that same deathly voice from before… He pronounced the name the same way as “Adam”, which means the “n” must be silent. I had no way of knowing that his name itself was actually part of a curse word…

Andy finished it off for them… having no need to repeat his name to us, he simply revealed their rather disturbing title…

“When you see us in hell… we’ll be referred to as ‘The Children of the Damned’…” Andy concluded with a darker more baritone voice to accommodate to his “family’s” demonic status…

I noticed Danny couldn’t help but shudder and I would have done the same if I wasn’t too focused on keeping us both alive… These were, without a doubt, the most threatening trio of kids I have _ever_ seen… And they seemed intelligent…… How would we be able to take down all three of them by ourselves?……

I don’t remember much of the battle… but it started off in earnest. Anthony instantly generated an orb of light in his palm and launched it directly at me… I blocked the blast with a wall of flames, only for Adamn to swerve around behind us and unleash a destructive torrent of light rays from beneath the ground… Danny and I jumped out of the way after being grazed by a few emissions of the energy… It seemed to burn our skin directly without even affecting our clothing… I could feel the sharp, stinging pain from the assault eating away at my flesh… Danny and I needed to end this quickly; these opponents were no idle threats…

I hurled a flame blast at Andy, furious with him for the betrayal, but he held up his hand and conjured a shield of the same light rays that the other two brothers had used against us… thus nullifying the entire attack. This battle was going nowhere fast… If these three were actual demons from hell, then they were probably in a league ahead of even Zorek… We had no chance of defeating them… our only option was to escape. It didn’t help that the cloudy skies were starting to produce rain as well… We couldn’t afford to have me at that kind of disadvantage when the odds were already stacked against us…

“Danny, stand back!” I warned him, and he immediately obeyed. Adamn prepared another attack, generating a massive amount of energy in both hands and potentially his eyes since they began to glow progressively brighter as well… It was now or never… I made it appear as though I combusted the surrounding area by causing it to erupt in controlled flames, allowing the rain to douse them and produce enough smoke to generate a smokescreen… Even though the rain didn’t immediately douse the flames, the Children of the Damned stood motionless in the crackling spread of fire… seemingly unfazed and completely unscathed… Shaking in momentary fear, I grabbed Danny’s shoulder. By now, I knew how to set up a recent selection for the teleporter watch and also became aware through practice that all I needed to do was have physical contact with another person, and that person would instantly be transported with me. I configured the watch to warp Danny and me within the daycare building and slammed my hand down on the “GO” button… Before the Children of the Damned could evaporate the smoke from the air with their somehow demonic light rays, Danny and I had vanished…

Danny and I spent the rest of that day hiding in an upstairs closet in the daycare center until the counselors came looking for us an hour later… and we were forced to step out and join in the activities. The Children of the Damned never appeared again for the remainder of the day…

I couldn’t help but tremble, repeating to myself over and over in my mind that things were getting _worse_ … This was _worse_ than Zorek…… Zorek’s existence was kept secret until he made his move and took Danny away… but his personal intentions were _always_ transparent…… This time… a new threat was staring us in the face and I hadn’t the slightest clue that he was someone who wanted to see my brother and I suffer…… It was such a short-lived friendship, but betrayal is betrayal… And this was the first one I had ever experienced firsthand… Even more unsettling was the fact that I remember imagining these people… Three kids with soul-rending, golden eyes… the cruel intentions and the desire to eradicate mankind…… Something brought them on… So I think back to a time when I was at my father’s place… Because space was limited and we wanted to be close with our father, Danny and I were always forced to share an air mattress in our father’s room whenever we slept over there. I would hear my father’s radio softy playing heavy songs to somehow help him sleep, and I distinctly remember hearing the song “Children of the Damned” by Iron Maiden a few weekends before we met Andy… the lyrics were gruesome but thankfully hard to make out. The only words I could interpret from the singer were “Children of the Damned”, “walking like a small child”, and “golden stare”… Had I known every lyric to the song, I have a feeling that my imagined manifestations of these characters would have turned out to be far more ferocious… But the fact still remains that the Children of the Damned who nearly defeated Danny and I after leaving us reeling from a coldhearted betrayal… were inspired by that song I heard on my father’s radio…… and I hadn’t even realized who Andy was until he decided to show his true colors.

…… My own creation had deceived me…… and as fate would have it, he would only be the first (and a mild example at that) of _many_ more to come……


	10. Stolen Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're the only one who could really know what makes you suffer the most… what you fear above all else… and it only becomes that much worse when you know, deep in your mind, that YOU were the one to cause all that pain…
> 
> It's mine and Danny's birthday, and what started out as a day with such promise and splendor… distorted into an unforgettable moment of pure hell and inexorable fear… We all have a dark side, people are two-faced and they always will be… but it's a different story when you're literally staring down the darkest part of you in the vulnerable eyes of who you feel like you simply can't live without…

The betrayal of our new friend Andy cut like a knife… But it merely left a flesh wound, so to speak. Considering we hardly knew anything at all about the guy prior to his treason, Danny and I were able to shake it off after a few days’ time. Although, rattled by the encounter with what seemed to be true hell spawns, Danny and I still weren’t quite comfortable with the prospect of continuing our superhero adventures… at least not right away… Being the one in control of that secret life we led, I decided to take a rest from it for a while for both our sakes… I could tell that there was something darker stirring in my mind, and adding fuel to that fire was the last thing I intended to do…

I didn’t create Danny to serve as fodder for villainous schemes… he wasn’t meant to be some tool for the monsters in my head to exploit, nor was he supposed to be an innocent life for me to save in order to feel good about myself… I made him for the sole purpose of being my companion who I could confide anything to… a brother who I would be motivated to influence properly; incentive for me to set a good example for once in my life…

… We could have built each other from the ground up…

But instead, he was always the catalyst that led to sheer chaos… I placed my burden of insatiable habits on him to rid myself of the desire to do wrong, my own mind allowed him to be oblivious of his surroundings and get abducted by a faceless demon, and I stood idly by as he gave our sensitive secrets away to a perfect stranger… It was even Danny who conceived the notion of conjuring darker enemies to begin with… My own selfishness took the helm, and Danny had undeniably become a detriment to my life rather than a savior… At that moment, I started to wonder if I was even capable of caring about others… Had I no sense of empathy whatsoever…?

…… Was Danny’s character even salvageable at this point……?

I desperately needed to take a few months to step back and reassess my dire situation… If I didn’t change something soon, I would continue to suffer _because_ of Danny… As it stood, he was every bit as much trouble as he was worth… I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him though… What would have happened to me if I had to face these progressively more malevolent adversaries on my own…? He was the ultimate double-edged sword… I couldn’t see a way out of this without sacrificing the very thing that kept me sane……

… until I realized exactly what I needed to wish for on my birthday that year……

Danny and I hadn’t seen any trace of Iceor, Physic Bender, Zorek, or the Children of the Damned in months… It was now winter, and both of our birthdays were fast approaching… For convenience, when I first imagined Danny, I simply made sure his birthday was the same as my own: December 20th. The birthday gifts were Bionicles of some kind, but when we received our vanilla ice cream cake… I thought my wish to myself and blew out the candles with Danny… that following night, my mind had granted me what I desired most that year…

Another chance……

I couldn’t repair Danny’s personality… but I managed to allow his existence to continue… and this time we were both playing the role of the older brother.

Shortly after building those Bionicles in the living room, Danny and I brought the constructed figures and their instruction manuals back to our bedroom. Night had fallen, but it was a waxing gibbous moon that evening of 2007, and the mystical lunar light spilled in from the window on the south wall. It was probably about 8:00 p.m. when Danny and I leisurely walked into the darkened room… our jaws hit the floor when we laid our eyes on the large, solid obstruction in front of us… It was only the second of many surprises that would make that December a month we’d never forget…

“Is…… that……?” Danny could hardly get out the words, he was so stunned… He stared at the object in front of him, his eyes wide with awe and his mouth agape… I couldn’t help but do the same... It was too crazy to believe… Unlike him though, I was at a complete loss for words… It was just too much to take in……

Situated directly in the center of the room… was a baby crib… The bars were risen high to ensure the occupant within wouldn’t tumble out of it. A bundle wrapped in a soft white blanket gazed up at us in wonder… curious… innocent… I didn’t even know how to explain to Danny that I had wished on that night for a new baby brother or sister to join the family… For Danny and I to both have a fresh start…… And now, even though it was physically impossible… by some _miracle_ … this impressionable infant was lying here, jabbering and giggling at us in delight. The light blue clothes he/she was wearing heavily implied that he was a boy. It was one of those moments where my imagination had such an overwhelming effect on my mind… I _genuinely_ believed that this baby boy was one-hundred percent _REAL_ …… When I finally snapped out of the blissful moment, I started to fear what my mind was really capable of…… How well could I fool myself into believing something that couldn’t possibly be true, especially to the point where even my senses started to become unreliable to me……?

The child was not real, no matter how authentic he seemed in my vivid fantasy… But even so, he was still a brand new part of my surreal life with Danny. And I knew Danny every bit as well as he knew me… This was the best thing that could have happened to us… I could remain cured of my obsession, and now Danny would have a reason to purge himself of the problem I passed over to him… He would need to nurture this new addition to the family properly with me, and that meant he couldn’t negatively influence him with his juvenile tricks… This was it… What I wanted for us all along and what we both so desperately needed… Our new beginning…

A major surprise indeed… Our first big surprise of the month was when the family and I went out to eat on that same day for our special birthday dinner. The restaurant was Friendly’s, and as we were ready to take our leave, a waiter came up and informed my mother that someone had ordered a vanilla birthday cake for us… The person who did so remained anonymous… It was bewildering, because one can only wonder: How in the world did this person know it was my birthday…? My own mother was every bit as surprised as I was, so it was no setup… In hindsight, it’s very possible that someone overheard us at the table, talking about how it was my birthday as I drew on the coloring activity pages before our meals had arrived. Evidently, a selfless and generous soul did us a kindness and bought the cake in secret… It might even be what inspired my mother to perform random acts of kindness herself… I still remember when she recently cruised down the drive-thru of Dunkin’ Donuts and paid for the coffee of the customer behind us, asking the employee to tell them to “have a great day” for her.

Naturally, the event stated above seemed trivial compared to what was happening now… Our father and mother were no longer seeing each other, and our mother had not been seeing any other men as of yet… How could this child exist……?

To this day, I have no explanation… He simply did not exist, and I wanted to raise a brother alongside Danny so badly that I made it happen, even though it was the very first case of a figment in my head that I couldn’t rationalize… that I couldn’t logically explain…

We had no way of knowing the baby’s name… It wasn’t anywhere for me to see and our mother would have never even known he existed… Danny and I needed to come up with one for him ourselves…

“He’s a boy right?…… Does he… have a name?…” Danny asked me, his voice thick with awe. I scanned the crib for any hint of text, but there was nothing… I shook my head slowly in response.

“I don’t think so…” I whispered, still taken aback by the whole experience… Danny glanced at me, then back to the boy in the crib.

“Well, we gotta give him one…” He said expressively.

I knew he was right… I thought hard for a few minutes… Somewhere in the annals of my memory, I recalled from my very religious grandmother on my mother's side of the family that the name “Jacob” translated to “May God Protect”… I didn’t want _anything_ to happen to him… He was like a treasure as fragile as glass…

“Maybe… Jacob? It means ‘may God protect’, and we can call him Jake for short… Maybe even Jakey until he gets older…” I suggested, hopeful that we’d see eye to eye on this. Danny absorbed the concept… tilting his head back and forth a little as he considered it… until he finally smiled and looked me in the eyes, opening his mouth to speak… But before he could get out the first word, the laughter emitting from the child in the crib started to die down… Next thing we knew, he started jabbering uncomfortably… Then he started to scream……

“What?! What’s wrong, what’s happening!??!” Danny asked frantically, rushing over to the crib, his hands gripping the top rim of the bars to maintain his balance as he peered inside… I did the same, completely dumbstruck by what was going on… He seemed fine a split second ago…

“I… I don’t know! Does he need something or—?”

The screaming grew louder… The baby shook his head aggressively, trying hard to fight whatever was ailing him… Before we knew it, he grew silent… Danny and I were so terrified at this point that I nearly called in my mother for real… What the _hell_ was happening right now?!!?!?

The baby came back to his senses… He seemed perfectly normal again… He looked up at us with big, bluish-grey eyes… I just now begin to notice a faint trace of blond hair along the top of his head… He smiles at us… but this wasn’t the same carefree innocent smiling he was engaging in before his attack… Something about it seemed sick… almost wicked in nature… When Danny and I finally realized the distinction, the nightmare came alive… We both completely forgot how to breathe… My spine was shuddering and my body was trembling…… The single, overriding thought that incessantly raced through my mind was the fact that “this can’t be real…”

Our new baby brother was glowering at us with a nightmare-inducing slasher smile… He started to laugh maniacally with the limited vocal abilities of a newborn child… I almost wanted to physically shake him out of it if I didn’t think it would kill him…… My heart’s in my throat as I stare deep into his now-blackened eyes…… The whites of them were gone; his pupils had expanded to fill the entire surface with pitch-black nothingness… I wasn’t the one that was reflected within them though… it was a pair of red eyes with a piercing glow… eyes without a face that were contained inside a large, black hood from that of a cloak……

My newborn brother… was possessed…… Mentally possessed by that bastard Zorek!!!

I couldn’t hold it back any longer… I screamed in terror, grabbing hold of my brother-turned-vessel for a demonic parasite…

“ _NO!!! YOU CAN’T!!!! GET OUT!!!!!! PLEASE, YOU CAN’T DO THIS!!!!!!_ ” I screamed hysterically at the top of my lungs… My mother shouted my name in response and emerged at the doorway in seconds… She urgently asked me what happened, but I just stood there in the middle of the room, stunned… I needed to come up with something to tell her _now_ …

In that moment of pure terror and shock, the best excuse I could come up with was that I saw a black widow spider on the ceiling… I don’t even know if they could come out in the dead of winter, but I was still shaking from what I’d just witnessed…

“I—… I saw—… It was a black widow and it was on the ceiling! I read in the poisonous insects book; those things can kill people can’t they!?” I stuttered, trying to get my story straight as best I could… My mother just gave me a funny look… Obviously, I’d majorly overreacted if I expected her to believe in _that_ lie…

“Okay… Did you really need to scream like that, I just ran in here thinking your head was on fire – or that someone broke in and…” She voiced in a mixture of anger and concern, not bothering to continue the harrowing sentence. She shook her head wearily and I felt a pang of guilt… but that crib was still in the room, and the possessed child was still laughing with evil zeal… I can hear it ringing in my ears even now…… By now my mother had told me to be calm but to call her if I see the spider again and walked back out of the room… Danny shot me a look of horror; his palms were pressed against his temples as his fingers dug into his hair in panic…

“What do we do?! What _can_ we do—how—how do we fix this?!?!” Danny screamed at me frantically, his eyes wide and unblinking with unrelenting fear… I had no answer for him… All I could do was try and reason with Zorek… he was the only one who had the power to end this…

“Zorek… _PLEASE_ …… _PLEASE LET HIM GO_ ……” I pleaded earnestly, making sure not to raise my voice to attract any unwanted attention again… But my words were falling on deaf ears. He wasn’t hearing me… I’m certain that the only thing on his mind was malice and vengeance… The infant continued laughing, until a blindingly bright light expanded from within the crib… Danny and I needed to shield our eyes, but once we could no longer hear the twisted laughter of our tragically bedeviled baby brother, our eyes shot open in shock… Our worst fear had been realized…

… The crib remained, but Jakey was gone……

I dropped to my knees in surrender… I don’t even remember how Danny was acting, I probably hadn’t noticed in that moment… My surroundings dissolved around me, and I was plunged into a world of pure darkness… It was unthinkable… We knew Zorek was a serious threat, but this went beyond _anything_ … No cruelty like this could ever have existed in my mind at the new age of 14…

My own brother was kidnapped… stolen away before he’d even gotten a chance to live……

We may never know what will happen to him… Or we might find out in the worst way imaginable when we least expect it… Even though Zorek was a villain with weakness — an enemy without true purpose — he still found a way to devastate me… to cripple me and leave me dwindling over the edge of bereavement… My resolve was hanging by a thread…… How could I _ever_ save my brother……? If I dared to use my teleportation watch and bring Danny along to confront Zorek, he would murder our newborn brother right in front of us… and it would be all… my… fault……

It was on that day that I finally came to a disturbing realization… Not only was Jake’s life stolen from him by the madness in my head… I was also being held captive by my own demented sense of imagination… These new adversaries I devised were shrouded in secrecy, but the truth had finally become clear… The _real_ enemy that I created in order to satisfy Danny’s request… was something far worse than I could have _ever_ imagined… An internal conflict that would continue to spawn hellish adversaries and personal demons that would forever keep me trapped… The older I’d get, the more lethal the threats would become… I was creating an actual psychological hell for myself to live in…… As a way of saying “You wanted a real opponent? Well now you’ve got one… see if your optimistic heroism can overcome _this_.”

Only then did I truly grow to fear what was happening to me… I honestly didn’t see how things could get much worse than this… How ignorantly naïve I must have been……

Happy birthday indeed…… This was only the beginning… and if I didn’t do something to correct this soon… my imagination would surely be the death of me……


	11. Spreading the Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes a real role model to dispel their anger and frustration before they resort to taking it out on others.  
> Unfortunately, we're only human… We make mistakes, and sometimes they can't be reversed……  
> I'm not proud of the atrocities I've committed in this chapter… but they're necessary to reveal in order to track my growth in the story… This time I'll share with you my outside experiences in school and how I chose to interact with my peers…  
> When even an escape from reality can't help you in the long term, and you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, there's only so much a person can take… before they snap.

Danny and I spent the following Sunday wallowing in silent despondency… How do you go from exuberantly reveling in every cherished moment of your special day… to cringing in mute horror over the haunting thoughts of whatever malignant torture that your worst enemy must be subjecting your newborn brother to…?

Danny and I may have been spared from physical harm, but the mental trauma of what we’d witnessed that night was damn near unbearable… Every day, for the next few days, the single overriding thought that ran through my head was “Because of me…” If I hadn’t made (much less _created_ ) such devilish enemies designed to put my brother and I through hell, then this new innocent life would never have been caught in the crossfire… and we could have been the perfect family without any fear of subjugation… But I couldn’t change the past, and the fact still remained that _I_ was the one who single-handedly shattered this poor soul’s early life beyond repair… I’ve devised thoughtful and effective solutions to some high-stress situations before, but I didn’t know the _first_ _thing_ about mending a dilemma of this magnitude…

… for the first time since I could remember, no matter how much thought and effort I put into conceiving one, an answer never came to me…

When you’re hit with a traumatic experience _this_ hard… something inside of you changes… You become a different person; all sense of righteousness and compassion is tossed out the window and the darkness in your heart and mind seizes control… Misery loves company… Humans innately want someone they can relate to in times of turmoil, and as you follow your worst instincts, you temporarily assign yourself the cruel task of spiting others until they feel just as morose as you do… It’s a terrible trait that mature individuals try to avoid by employing harmless coping mechanisms until they find themselves back in good spirits. Unfortunately, kids don’t see this coming at a younger age and make no attempt to prevent it… sometimes they even embrace these dejected feelings and seek to worsen the lives of anyone who crosses their path.

I’m ashamed to admit… that I once fell under the category of the type of person who selfishly put others down to feel like he wasn’t the only one who was suffering… in a vain attempt to ease the pain inside…

Harboring those demons in my head was already taking a toll on my demeanor at school… In order to keep their personalities alive, my subconscious mind retained their cruel and calculating nature – blending them into my own personality to align them with my daily routine and standard mentality. I was a 7th grade student at the time attending a middle school that teaches grades 6 through 8… I vividly remember when I was walking down the 2nd floor hallway in pursuit of a fellow student named Kyle Benton (pronounced as “BEN-tin”)… Kyle was a tall and wiry blond guy with green eyes, a regular haircut with the front combed to one side, and fluid facial expressions. He usually wore jersey T-Shirts of varying colors, blue jeans, and white sneakers. I don’t quite remember how we became friends, but I do remember teaching him tips and tricks for research during class time… and positioning pencils to be half-hanging over the edge of a table so you could chop them with your hand and watch them go flying toward the back of the room during break times when the teacher wasn’t present. I also recall how he was interested in how I could perform the “rubber pencil” parlor trick… Over time, we just grew to respect one another and enjoy each other’s company during school. He was the only classmate I revealed Danny’s existence to, but seeing as how we were of different ages, he assumed Danny was real and simply attended another school. Kyle and I might have been buddies, but not to the point that we’d ever visit each other’s houses. Whenever Kyle was around, I needed to temporarily remove Danny from my reality to keep that story straight… it was worth it to convince someone that he actually was real…

That following Monday, on December 22nd, something inside my mind was compromised by the voices locked away in my head… or even just the sorrow I couldn’t get over… Without any remorse and for no reason in particular, I yearned for something highly disturbing……

As I said, Kyle was a very expressive kid… For some twisted reason, I desired to see his face twinge in pain… I wanted to see what it looked like when he got hurt, as long as it only lasted for a few seconds… I know what you’re thinking: with friends like me, who needs enemies? And I know it’s premature to blame that sadistic, fleeting desire on my purported personalities, but how else can I explain such a sudden change of heart? I love to help others and remove whatever’s bothering them… yet here I wanted the opposite… to see them cringe from the pain I dealt them… But I fail to see the logic in it… I needed to get rid of my current enemies, so _why_ would I want to go around making more…? It _must_ have been Zorek – sabotaging me and exacerbating the situation tenfold…

It’s one thing to fantasize about these urges; it’s another to act upon them… I still remember the low hum of the fluorescent lighting that droned in my ears as I strode down the linoleum walkway with a blank sheet of paper in hand… thin, metal lockers and classroom doors flanked us on both sides… I was gaining on Kyle and one of his friends walking alongside him; the two were talking about something irrelevant. Eager for my wish to come true, I snuck up behind Kyle and ran the thin side of the paper along the back of his neck, effectively slicing it and giving him a bitch of a paper cut in the process… I remember how he immediately brought his hand up to the spot of infliction to cover and block the flow of oxygen to the viciously stinging wound… He simultaneously seethed in pain and whirled his head around to face me… and I just smiled in excitement… as though to say “Look! New makeshift weapon!” while his face registered a mixture of both anger and anguish… Naturally, the friend he was with was horrified and looked at Kyle with fear in his eyes and concern on his face.

“Dude, are you okay?…” he asked earnestly as I had already resumed walking past them down the hall; the paper-turned-weapon still grasped in my hand… The realization of what I had just done was beginning to dawn on me as I overheard Kyle’s friend worry for Kyle’s safety…

… I literally just hurt my own friend because I wanted to see him in pain… There would probably be consequences that followed that wouldn’t just involve me losing said “friend” for good…… What the _hell_ did I just do…? What was I even _thinking_ ……?

But Kyle’s reply surprised me. I never looked back and just kept pressing onward, but I did hear Kyle tell his friend not to worry about it in a tone of voice that suggested he was disappointed but not angry. A small trace of Kyle’s blood remained on the paper, and for a brief moment I actually wondered if I could do something with it… But my moral integrity finally resurfaced and I decided against it; trashing the thing. Apparently, no teachers or faculty were ever made aware of the incident, and after only two days had passed, Kyle and I went back to being friends and literally acted like the whole thing never even happened… I didn’t even need to apologize to the guy…

I never did understand why Kyle forgave me so easily for randomly turning on him like that… there wasn’t even the slightest struggle – no sign of ill will between us at all… I never messed with him again after that, figuring he was the last person who would deserve it… How forgiving did a person need to be in order to be spared from my misplaced wrath? For the longest time, I held a firm belief that there was no such thing as right or wrong… that if someone acted out of turn, it was justification to retaliate. My prime source of anger was anger itself… If something didn’t go someone’s way and their first response was immediate indignation, I would have berated them for their impatience and inability to solve things in a civil manner before they gave in to rage and resentment… Kyle showed me that not everyone was like that, and that some people _can_ let bygones be bygones… I trusted that he truly had no plans of getting even, and so I suspended this belief for him alone.

That was a rare moment in my life where I deliberately and directly harmed another person for thrills… I still couldn’t wrap my mind around how I’d become the type of person who would hurt his friends without a thought, if even for just a moment… That night, at around midnight, I felt this thumping pain in my chest—my heart even… It just kept palpitating and I could feel it getting weaker with each throb… the scariest part of all is that this was _all_ 100% real… nothing imagined, no fantasies at play… I was having a genuine heart problem…

I explained the uncomfortable feeling to my mother and she just assumed it was heartburn, so she gave me some Tums antacid tablets to help relieve the pain… They worked to an extent, but I could still feel the throbbing persist… Danny was still asleep at the time and never heard any of this going on from his imaginary bed across the room. I tried to just ignore it and sleep it off…

The next morning, the aching had stopped and everything seemed fine again…

I figured it was just a bout of bad cholesterol giving me heartburn and went to school that day with Danny by my side… It’s important to note that I was never the most exemplary student in middle school… I loathed the idea of waking up so early in the morning to waste my time listening to people who made zero effort in making their classes enjoyable despite the fact that we were essentially forced to attend them… I showed up about an hour late to school and flat-out skipped several days a year… My grades consisted of C’s and D’s; deplorable but acceptable for passing… There was just something about school that I detested… I had a difficult time accepting the fact that you can’t skate through life by riding on someone else’s coattails. I tried to see the value in the lessons I was learning in class, but everything seemed pointless to me… Danny passed math with flying colors, but since my inability to pay attention obviously carried over to him, he wasn’t exactly a suitable tutor…

Throughout my middle school experience, there was only one classmate who I actually respected and looked forward to seeing when it came to approaching those dull assignments in an interesting way… his name was Colin Monroe. Colin was an averagely built guy with brown eyes, curly brown hair, and sociable conduct. He usually wore a navy blue sweatshirt, dark blue jeans, and black shoes. Colin was a nice person all around but he had one characteristic that blew me away…: the ability to creatively change boring worksheet problems to reflect on something he enjoyed instead, particularly in math. He would take word problems and completely replace the inconsequential subject matter from referring to filing cabinets and folders… to race tracks and racecars for example. I didn’t have any interest in cars or racing, but I was impressionable at the time… and his methodology for improving upon uninteresting assignments to make them enthralling was astonishing in my eyes. In hindsight, chances are strong that he learned this simple skill from a parent… but when I asked him one day how he worked his magic, he showed me that he took it past the realm of mathematics and managed to invoke enough imagination to accurately modify English, Science, and Social Studies problems in the same fashion…

One day, I remember walking up to him during one of our class periods when the teacher stepped out… We only knew each other from class and to say we were even remotely friends would be a lie for the history books. But as I said, Colin was friendly in general, so he showed me a glimpse of his talent when I asked to see it for myself.

“Hey, Colin… how do you make school stuff fun like that?” I half-asked and half-demanded in a tone of voice that implied I was sick of him keeping the secret to himself. He looked up at me in confusion and stopped writing with his pencil; darting his eyes back and forth in brief disorientation…

“Umm… What do you mean?” he asked slowly; trying to process the abrupt intrusion… and making the already awkward situation even worse. His voice was slightly higher-pitched compared to most guys in the class, but was otherwise pretty average.

“I mean, like math and how you make the problems say different stuff so it’s actually interesting for once,” I tried to elucidate for him. He perked up after it finally clicked and he understood what I was trying to inquire.

“Oh, it’s easy! Just change up the words in your head so it’ll say something you like and then it’s easier to solve or just write down,” he explained clearly while remaining seated, but it wasn’t new information… I already knew this was what he was doing, what I wanted was to know _how_ he was pulling it off… Whenever I thought something, it would usually come true and consume me… how could the products of his imagination be set aside so easily…?

“I know but _how?_ Can you show me?” I tried to hold on to my patience, but merely talking about school had a tendency to make my tone worse over time… Yeah… my hatred for it was _that_ bad…

“Like, look here… I took cabinets and changed them to cars in a word problem. For science I took tectonic plates and made them different pizza crusts. Just make sure you write the right stuff down but think it’s something else and you’re good, man.” He pulled out a few folders and showed me some examples as he said this, looking back up at me with a cordial smile to end his clarification. My eyes widened from shock over the fact that he was able to use this same technique on Science as well… I realized that he could probably mold it for each subject and virtually thrive in the classroom no matter what was thrown his way… It amazed me, and I tried to take his advice, but it would never work for anything beyond world problems… To be able to call up your imagination and think one thing while writing another was a prospect that was completely foreign to me… Even now, I’m not fully capable of controlling it fluently enough to achieve this… My imagination is just too damn powerful to be silenced that easily……

I never had any qualms about Colin. We didn’t know each other very well, after all… Whenever Danny or I would pull a prank… whether it was streaking a huge “X” in pencil through half of a paper filled out with handwritten work, or folding someone’s used math paper several times more than what was required for separating the problems into square box sections, I made sure to always leave Colin out of it. I knew that I’d eventually be able to utilize the information he selflessly shared with me even if it wasn’t right away… That means he helped me in a sense, and so screwing around with his work would have been far less than he deserved. He was a good student and literally put serious thought into all of his work…

In short, I saw him as an inspiration for me to improve as a student… His methods gave me the push that I needed, but I eventually outgrew them. To this day, I maintain nothing less than a 3.7 average in both high school and college, and I fully recognize the importance of education and how it can make or break your entire life in the long run… I owe so damn much to this guy…… it’s unthinkable……

One other classmate who sticks out in my memory was a Christian kid named Andrew Sylva (pronounced as SILL-vuh). Andrew was a slightly short brunet guy with a wings haircut, an athletic build, stormy blue eyes, and a very soft, easygoing expression on his face. He would never be seen without a Boston Red Sox cap worn backwards over his head and frequently wore a black or white T-Shirt, a light gray hoodie, blue jeans, and black sneakers. Now he was someone who you could easily approach and always expect a friendly greeting from. In fact, I think he might have been one of the friendliest kids in the grade… I wasn’t friends with him myself, but this guy had nice things to say even about acquaintances… Part of me wondered what made him so damn cheerful all the time, but I figured it was just a character trait that unfortunately not everyone possessed… Looking back, my old neighbors Patrick and Dennis were just as friendly as he was even though they were of younger ages.

Andrew may have been friendly, but what made him memorable for me was his impressive generosity. One day during Phys. Ed. in the springtime, I rushed down the hall leading to the locker room after lunch, only to realize I’d forgotten my change of clothes at home and was wearing jeans to school that day as I did every day… Packing up that plastic bag of clothes inside the already overfilled backpack was a serious hassle; it was way too easy to forget them behind in class or leave them at home when packing up for the day since we never had gym more than three times a week… I was already getting C’s and D+’s for grades in gym for never being active or doing much during the games, but the rules for changing clothes were quite strict… If you weren’t dressed appropriately for the class, you’d be forced to sit out from all activities and would receive a zero for the day. C’s and high D’s were one thing, but receiving an F could potentially have failed me for that semester… my grade was hanging by a thread – struggling in academics is one thing, but failing gym was a different story…… _That_ would have prompted punishment, so I stormed into the locker room, threw my backpack down on a nearby bench, and slammed my fist against the locker in frustration; lowering my head in despair… To think I was going to probably fail gym for forgetting my clothes _one freaking time_ ……

Obviously, slamming my hand to the locker made a hell of a loud noise, so everyone in the room knew I was upset. Fortunately, Andrew went up to me from the other side of the lockers that were situated in the center of the room to see what was bothering me.

“You all right, dude?” He asked sincerely, which I found odd because I doubt he even knew my name at the time. His voice was silvery and amiable; I figured I’d let him in on what happened just so I could have _someone_ to talk to about it.

“I forgot my clothes and my grades are already awful so there’s no way I’m gonna pass the class now…” I explained with rising frustration, not bothering to lift my head, but instead glancing in his direction. He mulled something over for a second and looked almost nervous for a moment before returning back to his relaxed state, looking at me with unusual sympathy for a practical stranger.

“You wanna just borrow mine…? What I’m wearing right now, they probably won’t even be able to tell if I change or not so…” he explained, pointing out that he was indeed wearing a T-Shirt and shorts as it is… The P.E. instructors might not even know the difference…… I was taken aback by that insane display of kindness; this kid probably just saved my grade and whatever I would’ve had taken away from me as punishment for failing… What’s crazier is that he was risking his own grade for the day to try and bail me out… literally giving me the shirt off his back without asking for anything in return. I didn’t know any other guy who would ever have done that for someone they only knew in passing……

“That’s… I mean—Really??? That’d be perfect, you’d really do that???” I had a hard time comprehending his magnanimity, but he just nodded and picked up his drawstring P.E. bag and pulled the shirt and shorts out of it, handing them to me. I couldn’t believe it…… this kid who I barely knew was an absolute lifesaver……

“Dude… thank you _so… much…_ You don’t even know what you’re doing for me right now…” I expressed my gratitude but was still a little disconcerted by how he was being so nice to me… I was _certain_ that he expected me to return the favor… eventually. But he just took his bag and walked back to his side of the room and stuffed it in the locker.

“No prob, but just make sure to give them back right after,” he advised me, and I already had every intention of doing so.

“Oh yeah, definitely.” I assured him and changed into the clothes he lent me.

I made a slightly better effort in gym that day and I don’t believe Andrew was ever caught for wearing the same clothes he’d come to school in. When the class was over, I returned to the locker room, changed back into my regular attire and gave the shirt and shorts back to him, thanking him one last time. He packed up and we were both off to our next respective classes after that… I believe he was able to trick the instructor into thinking he did change his clothes because I thought I saw him putting on the same shirt he was already wearing. He must have just taken it off and then put it right back on to make it look like he changed. Pretty slick for that age, I have to admit…

Either way, he really helped me out that day… I honestly didn’t even know his name prior to that particular encounter, so I paid attention the next time we were both in class for when his name was called, and I’ve surprisingly remembered it to this day. It was people like him who restored my faith in humanity… As brooding as I was, I often wondered what the world would be like if we set our differences aside and helped whoever we could. What an earth-shattering difference that would make……

But back to the present, it was now December 23rd, 2007… I was still spiraling from the nerve-racking situation with Zorek and my possibly dead or tormented baby brother Jakey… It was just one of those days where I wasn’t going to tolerate any crap from _anyone_ … It should also be said that, by that time, I had developed quite the negative reputation at school… My darkness wasn’t only shown in bursts, I was antisocial and skulked around the halls… never smiling out of kindness; sometimes never blinking for anything… people could see that I had a diseased mind… I was probably regarded as someone who was secretly planning to set the school on fire… a student to steer clear of, and someone who all the teachers had their eye on. They probably knew I was harmless, but the students in passing thought differently… I must have treated school as a prison at that age… but I also didn’t want to socialize with the other kids who had nothing in common with me, so I became the person that literally anyone who didn’t know me would _not_ want to mess with… I would stab people with mechanical pencils on a bad day… cuss at teachers for no reason on a good day… I built that reputation for myself without even realizing it… I was asked by a teacher what my problem was and I literally retorted that the problem was that he was trying to reason with someone whose good-natured spirit was replaced by a darkened soul and a heart of ice. I remember how taken aback he was to hear that coming out of my mouth verbatim… I felt feared, but it didn’t matter to me…

The only thing that mattered was protecting Danny and myself from these monsters in my head… and now Jake as well…… if it wasn’t already too late……

That day at lunch, the pains in my chest were slowly returning… I was strictly a creature of habit at the time, so to make it through the lunch line only to find that my seat had already been taken was something I considered to be an outrage… almost like an invitation to anger me… Like I said, no one messed with me… Other than Kyle – who wasn’t in that lunch period with me – I didn’t really have any friends in middle school and sat at a specific spot so as to keep up appearances. Moving from that spot to another would have potentially sparked a conversation with random people who I had no interest in associating with, and the thought of that pissed me off a great deal… I didn’t want to put up with any more people than I already had to in a day at school… I didn’t recognize the student who was in my seat nor the friends around him. The only thing I remember about him was that he had brown hair that was in a crew cut of some sort… I didn’t know how to tackle the situation, so I walked up to him and tried to settle things so they’d end in my favor.

“I don’t know who the heck you are, but you’re in my seat.” I didn’t exactly have a reputation for being polite… I assumed that was enough to get the message across and tried that stupidly assertive approach in order to get my way, but the nameless student wasn’t about to let me walk all over him… He turned to his friends and eventually cracked a smile with them following suit. I don’t think he even turned to face me when he gave me his terse and disengaged response.

“Okay…” he replied, not moving an inch and outright ignoring me afterward.

It was a situation I had no control of whatsoever… It was honestly the first time anyone stood up to me when I used my convincing but idle threats, because he simply chuckled with his friends over the absurdity of my aggravation as I was left to stand there with my lunch tray in both hands. It wouldn’t have been long before the whole thing turned into a spectacle, and I quickly realized that if I let this go on any longer, my reputation of being the menacing guy who people wanted to stay away from would be in jeopardy… I could run the risk of being ridiculed for the rest of my middle school days… and the thought of putting up with _that_ coupled with the tension of being the reason behind my baby brother’s premature demise and/or torture, mine and Danny’s ongoing internal torment, them laughing over my irritation at all, and the unrelenting heartburn I was enduring again was _far_ more than I could take… I was about to blow my stack right there; the weight of that pressure was about to set me off and provoke me into doing something I would be sure to regret… Danny was standing beside me, but no one could see him of course, and while he understood that I didn’t take these types of situations well, he himself didn’t see it as a big deal at all.

“Jason, just forget him. I’ll find us another spot,” Danny insisted meekly as he could see the frustration rising within me…

I quickly looked around and immediately noticed that we had inadvertently attracted a small crowd of onlookers from the circular cafeteria tables and that it was sure to grow at an alarming rate… My blood was boiling and I scowled in sheer rage… I needed to act fast or everything I’d worked for in terms of keeping people away from me would have been ruined in one fell swoop… I held onto the lunch tray in one hand and lashed out, grabbing the student by the neck with my free one… not squeezing but maintaining my grasp so as to keep up appearances for the crowd and make it appear as though I wasn’t about to stand being defied… Because he knew I wasn’t really trying to choke him, the student didn’t even react and continued smiling at my irascibility over what should have been a nonissue. Naturally though, what I was doing was _dead wrong_ … and fate punished me by literally having a teacher notice my silent act of violence _the moment it happened_. I barely had time to utter a few words in a hushed, threatening voice at the student before I was caught…

“Look, you—“ I started, holding onto the student’s throat in a witless but desperate attempt at scaring him off. Before I could say anything more, a woman who was supervising for the cafeteria spoke out.

“ _Hey!_ ” she scolded, which obviously attracted the attention of every eye in the cafeteria. I slowly turned to face her, angrier than ever but smiling in disbelief… This just wasn’t my fucking day……

“Come with me,” she ordered, beckoning me in a gesture.

I released the student and shook my head, still smiling over my unbelievably abysmal luck as I exited the cafeteria with my lunch and followed the supposed teacher into the principal’s office. I was told to wait there in the chair in front of the desk until the principal returned. The horrible irony of this is that I got what I wanted… to be alone as I ate lunch (which I think was just a bologna and cheese sandwich or something), but the way this whole thing played out, I couldn’t even come up with a reason to bring Danny in there with me since he wasn’t involved in the quarrel… and getting him punished just to keep him close was the last thing I was going to do to my own brother who’d already been through as much as I had…

I realized that I made a mistake, but I didn’t yet see the error in my ways… in that moment, all I could feel was bitter hatred…… I wanted to see that student rot in hell for the humiliation and the way he screwed with me when so much was already weighing heavy on my exhausted mind…… I genuinely thought about poisoning his drink somehow once I got out of that room and everything was seemingly resolved……

We do stupid things out of anger… Our judgment becomes clouded; this is all common knowledge… And no one is exempt…… I stayed put in that room, but used the opportunity to take my anger out on the one person who I thought deserved it more than even the unnamed student……

Mother… Fucking… Zorek……

I knew where his little underground lair was… if Danny didn’t know I left, then he wouldn’t run the risk of tagging along and getting hurt or inadvertently providing Zorek with more ammunition…… Maybe I could rescue Jakey all on my own…… I needed _something_ to shape up my day after all, and _that_ would have been the highpoint of my month……

Sitting still and eating lunch in reality but using my imagination to travel, I input a few commands on my teleportation wrist watch… plotting a course for that specific area in the woods where the wooden slab that doubled as an entrance resided… I slammed down on the “GO” button and was immediately warped there. The air was frigid, but wasn’t particularly freezing for that time of year… It wasn’t snowing currently, but some of it had already fallen and left the ground with a thin layer of the frozen droplets while a few sheets of ice were visible, but easily overstepped… It was odd seeing the thick, ominous trees bare of all leaves but I was in no mood for sight-seeing… I was practically a ticking time bomb…… I stalked up to the snow-covered slab and recited the mysterious pass phrase in a venomous snarl…

“Serpent…”

The slab slid away and gave way to the abyss that was Zorek’s hide-away… I swiftly traversed through the tunnel and found myself staring down two candidates of the bastard’s army of humanoid snake guards once again… They hissed possessively and drew their swords in a flash… I didn’t flinch; I knew their temper couldn’t hold a candle to mine in that moment…… and I craved to see some bloodshed……

As one of them charged to strike, I immediately dug my fingers into its scaly hide and proceeded to vertically rip it in half with my bare hands… Its ally ferociously lunged at me, but I ducked to avoid its snapping jaws and slapped the interior remains of its partner directly onto its face… I already knew Zorek had a thing for acid, and judging by the sizzling of that thing’s internal organs, it wasn’t hard to deduce what those fiends were really made of…

The snake beast was caught off guard and screeched in pure, satisfying agony as the corrosive insides of its brethren seared away its scales and flesh; dissolving its eyes into viscous pools of molten viscera before they could even roll into the back of its head… and causing the hell spawn to shrivel up into a quivering glob of liquefied pulp. The stench was insufferable, but tearing that thing down in such a savage manner made it oh so worth it…

I was chomping at the bit for a chance to come face to face with Zorek again…… the horrors I would unleash upon that fucker for stealing my brother and happiness away from me would dwarf everything he could _hope_ to do to us…… I trudged forward, ignoring the pain in my chest, with nothing but Zorek’s imminent demise on my mind…… I would make sure that he would _never_ live to see another day……

Unfortunately, by now the principal had walked through the door and I had no choice other than to temporarily suspend my fantasy … It wasn’t easy, but I returned to reality and listened to his lecture about how I overreacted and that violence is never the answer… I already knew my reaction was improper – I wasn’t that spastic… I knew that the situation wasn’t even remotely close to something that was worth strangling someone over, but in the heat of the moment, I needed to do something to save my reputation… when I should have just saved face instead.

When he was through with convincing me that I was in the wrong there, he let me return to my classes… I had only two periods left after lunch, so by the time he released me, I only had a few minutes of my final period left to go…… Since I didn’t even apply myself at school at the time, I wasn’t concerned about having missed anything in the other classes and figured the only real repercussion of that day would be consequences from my parents. Class ended and I returned to the cafeteria to wait for my school bus to arrive. Now that everything had quieted down, Danny took this opportunity to check in with me after the fiasco he’d witnessed firsthand…

“So umm… you feeling any better…?” he asked tentatively.

I just shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. Compared to everything else we were dealing with, I finally came to terms with the fact that the whole thing was pointless.

“I’m done with it,” I replied flatly.

I never would have guessed though that the student from before would then approach me shortly afterward with his friends and apologize about what happened at lunch earlier. I don’t think he was even told by any teachers to do that… and it sucks that he did, because he never did anything wrong!

I just nodded my head in response, and I couldn’t tell if the student or his friends were uneasy or not… But apparently they were…… This kid wasn’t being contrite or trying to simply avoid conflict… I’m sure that I saw something flash behind his eyes that resembled a mild inkling of fear… I guess my plan worked after all… I startled him, but what good would it do anyone…? It was brash, impulsive, and thoughtless…… The guy was resolute and wasn’t going to let me push him around, and in hindsight, I highly commend him for that…… but it all fell apart and he ended up just like all the others regardless…… why was I able to control people so well…? Why was it that the only one who dared to stand up to me buckled down under the pressure of my potential retaliation that was never even gonna happen…?

I guess the real question here is… why did this quiet, unmuscular, glasses-wearing middle school student with all bark and no bite manage to frighten an entire school of peers into never denying him anything he demanded……? It’s sickening that I was ever able to get away with so much… my mother was never even informed of the events that transpired that day so no punishment followed……

I may have been under both high-level stress and physical pain, but I was way out of line…… what I needed more than anything at that point was a reality check……

However, since Danny was now with me, I needed to pull the plug on the quest to bring down Zorek or else he’d get wrapped up in all the hell that was sure to ensue from my impetuous assault…… When his back was turned for a moment, I returned to the fantasy and immediately coordinated the watch to send me back to Danny himself, which would put me directly beside him and remove the mission from my brain entirely.

At the very least, Christmas Eve was tomorrow… Our family reunions were always a blast, so Danny and I would catch some much needed reprieve that night where hopefully nothing would spoil the tradition……

If only I was sensible enough to realize that my karma was _long_ overdue…

…… And that I would very nearly lose my own life as a result of my revolting behavior……


	12. Hell Is Where the Heart Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mental scars are one thing, but physical scars are something else entirely......
> 
> In what was quite possibly the most difficult period of my life, Christmas of 2007 was more inconceivably horrifying for my entire family than anyone could have possibly expected...... I was finally about to pay the ultimate price for selling my soul to the devil and inviting the evils of Zorek and actual children from Hell into my mind...... it only got worse when I unknowingly tormented others out of selfishness or even for my own sick entertainment......
> 
> What I went through that week... I wouldn't wish on even my worst enemy...... This is the darkness of my past that I will carry with me for the rest of my life......

I’ve been dreading needing to relive the events that took place throughout this particular chapter… The only solace I could hold onto in my most terrifying moments of self-imagined torture was the fact that none of it was ever _truly_ real…… No matter how horribly traumatic those days were, or how palpable my senses seemed to be in the wake of those experiences, I could always rest easy bearing the knowledge that they never existed outside of my mind… It was all in my head……

… But the most painful memories are always the ones that you know were more real than anything…… genuinely horrifying and mind-rending because they felt infinitely worse than even a barrage of real-time nightmares…… You always knew, deep in your mind…… that those horrible times we all wish we could forget were right there in front of you…… ravaging you; making you question everything you had ever believed in……

…… and it was _all_ as soul-crushingly _real_ as your very existence itself……

I’m boundlessly grateful to have only experienced a handful of such experiences for myself… I rarely face actual tragedy or get physically injured…… my earliest example was when I spun around the living room at the age of 5 or 6 and accidentally smashed into the sharp corner of a coffee table…… My left eyebrow was stabbed as a result, and the searing pain was unlike most things I’ve ever endured to this day…… I brought my hand up to my eye in excruciation and my mother came rushing in, horrified for my safety. Judging by the blood gushing through my fingers, she assumed the worst and thought that when I removed my hand, my eyeball would be inside of it…… I’m incredibly blessed to have only gotten out with a scar on my left eyebrow that only stings when it’s touched… I nearly put an eye out that day…… even more remarkable and downright astonishing is the fact that my now deceased uncle – and my mother’s brother – Albert had the exact same scar in the exact same place, but on the opposite side…… I wouldn’t learn this until several years later, but I was also informed that his was brought upon by a bike riding accident or something to that extent… He died in a car accident when I was quite young, so I never really got to know Albert… but I have the unshakable feeling that he just might be my guardian angel…… and in this chapter… I’ll reveal to you exactly why I adamantly believe this skeptically inexplicable notion with all my heart and soul……

After that catastrophe of an afternoon, I couldn’t help but dwell on how royally I screwed up that day when Danny and I returned home…… I was already at the age where I stopped believing in Santa Claus being more than just a historical figure… I honestly don’t know what Danny thought at the time, but he was a bright kid and wasn’t easily fooled… He was probably wise to the truth as well and just never said anything. The point being, I knew that misbehaving in secret wasn’t going to affect my Christmas and that the only ones who really knew if I was “naughty or nice” were my parents.

Danny could see that I was sulking over the thought of possible consequences, so he decided to cut me some slack and gave the pranking a rest that night. He could tell I needed my space, so he just played Pokémon on a Gameboy Advance and left me alone with my thoughts… I wasn’t entirely brooding though… Christmas Eve was the next day and we had about a full week off from school, so the excitement was still there… it just wasn’t as pronounced as it could have been had none of that ever happened……

The stress on my mind and encompassing fear made the pounding in my heart feel even worse… I took more Tums and spent the rest of the night fighting through the pain before I eventually fell asleep, only to wake up the next morning with it having been completely dissipated… as per usual.

Danny and I awoke that next morning, and I was feeling a lot better about yesterday… After thinking about it, I realized that since that troublesome student apologized to me when the day was through, then maybe I’d be able to convince the teachers that the whole thing was already resolved between us… that is, if they even decided to pursue it a week later when we were called back to school.

I didn’t have any reason to worry… it was a promising new day and our Christmas Eve reunions were always a thrill. Danny and I would always be driven to our Uncle Chris’ and Aunt Sara’s house, which was one of the two most impressive and spacious homes in the family, and meet up with all our family members in a colossal living room where a towering Christmas tree resided in the corner. A generous spread of food was laid out for their guests and we would spend time there until anywhere from 9:00 p.m. to midnight opening gifts, playing games, and enjoying ourselves in general with our cousins. In some cases, Christmas Eves were more enthralling than actual Christmas mornings because of the palpable excitement and anticipation that emanated from everyone around us. Christmas would always deliver, but once everything was opened and the day was done, there wasn’t anything else to look forward to or celebrate and so the feeling was never quite the same as it was the night before. Christmas Eve at that house with the entire family was always one of the most magical nights of the year…

But I knew this year was going to be different… I just didn’t know by how much……

Danny had participated in the tradition with me once before since I’d known him for a year at that point, but as joyful as our family was during this time of year, the fact that only I knew would afflict my heart like a rusty dagger dipped in rubbing alcohol…… Our newest family member would not be able to celebrate with us… and god knew if he was even still alive after what I’d witnessed and never mentioned a word to anyone about…… Thank god for Danny being there and understanding our situation or I would have been downright miserable that night… With him by my side, I was able to take his advice and do everything I could to block that thought out of my head just as he did… We ended up having a great time with the family, and considering my chest hadn’t palpitated even once for hours, I optimistically wondered if that awful sensation had finally run its course… It seemed everything was finally going right for a change……

But as the later hours of the night crept up on us, the family decided to settle the restless children by playing a DVD of Disney’s _Mulan_ on TV for them to watch. I stayed put and watched the film for what couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before I dozed off on the beige loveseat due to lack of sleep from the week worth of nights I’d spent battling my heart ailment… I would’ve fought with all my willpower to stay awake had I known I would wake up two hours later… in a condition worse than I’d ever been up to that point……

I was forcibly awoken by a wrenching pain in my chest cavity… I looked over to the TV and saw Mulan scaling the rooftop in an attempt to escape Shan Yu… It was the climax of the movie, meaning I’d slept through almost the entire film… My heart was screaming out to me; this alleged “heartburn” was unbearable…… I quickly rose off the couch to take more Tums to hopefully alleviate the pain…… For heart _burn_ , this wasn’t a burning sensation at all… It was a tremulous thumping – some sort of pounding, stabbing pain in the left side of my chest that I couldn’t hope to ignore…… Danny saw what was going on and asked if I was okay, but even I had no idea what was wrong with me…… I had to lie and tell him that I was sure it was nothing, just heartburn I’d been dealing with for the last few days…

After a good twenty minutes, the quivering feeling in my chest finally stopped again. It was absolutely ridiculous how the pain would just come and go like that, night after night…… It would always come back at around midnight and would last roughly twenty minutes among every few hours in the daytime… It was _always_ at its worst near 12:00 a.m.……

When Danny and I returned home, he told me to tell him the next time I feel that kind of pain again… I promised him I would, but the palpitating was much milder that night since I had been through the brunt of it at the end of _Mulan_ , so I never woke him up for anything……

Christmas morning was finally here, and I remember my and Danny’s main gift was a Nintendo Wii console with a game that I yearned for, though I can’t remember for the life of me which game it was…… All I remember is that it involved volcanoes and monstrous foes with interchangeable playable characters in mid-gameplay, as well as a deep storyline. Danny and I were anxious to play it, but first we needed to visit our cousin’s house for a reason I don’t quite recall……

All I remember is that, once we arrived there, I barely went fifteen minutes before my heart started acting up again… At this point, I was getting accustomed to the pain, but it was still a problem…… It didn’t make it harder to breathe, but something inside of my chest was weakening…… I didn’t know what it was at the time and I just figured it was more heartburn since I didn’t choose the healthiest meals as a kid. I even remember my cousin Nathan asking what was wrong with me and why I stopped helping him build his Star Wars Lego set, and my aunt simply told him that I wasn’t feeling too well lately… As usual, the pain eventually stopped, and Danny and I played that unnamed video game for almost the whole day until we stopped at a volcanic cliff to shut down and turn in for the night.

That night on Dec. 25th, at about 11:30 pm, I was struck by the same heart problem like clockwork… only this time…… it wasn’t going away………

I clutched the left side of my chest in agony. I was nearly brought to tears – not by the stabbing pain I’d grown so used to by then, but by the fact that this was obviously something potentially fatal and I didn’t see it stopping anytime soon…… It felt more overwhelming this time too… It was like the left side of my ribs was about to cave in on me then and there……

More desperate than ever, I tried to pray in bed for Jesus to spare me from whatever was happening to my heart… I pleaded and remember saying that I needed him now more than ever… I promised to change and stop following that darker path if I could just have this one final chance at life…… but the trembling of my assaulted heart persisted, and I had finally had enough of the mysterious dilemma that threatened to stop my heart from beating forever……

I got up out of bed and knocked on my mother’s bedroom door, nervously but steadily telling her I needed her and that I thought I needed to go to the hospital……

That was something I avoided at all costs, and she knew it… I hated the thought of being held up at the hospital for weeks on end and especially the idea of needing open heart surgery… She knew this was serious and made all the arrangements she needed in order to drive me to the hospital as quickly as her silver Volkswagen could take us… I was worried that the pain would cease before we got there, which would make it appear as though there was nothing wrong with me at all… Whatever that ailment was, it was persistent but transient… It was ruthless as hell when it happened, but didn’t last long when it did… We finally made it to the building but needed to sit in a waiting room before I could be treated…… By the time we were called inside, the pain had stopped and I figured I was screwed…… We had _no_ proof whatsoever that there was ever anything wrong with me now…… They’d think we were just wasting their time……

Even beyond the fear of surgery, I was more so petrified by the thought that they might not take my condition seriously at all…… I instinctively knew that it was a life-threatening problem because it directly involved my heart that was weakening as a result of it, and if they thought they had nothing to diagnose, then I’d be as good as done for……

Thankfully, after my blood was drawn twice by a doctor and a nurse, they could tell something was seriously wrong… I couldn’t help but notice the “Merry Christmas Dec. 25th” written in blue marker on the dry-erase board… At some point, my mother even informed the doctor that my birthday was five days ago, to which he wished me a happy belated birthday. But the Christian child in me thought that I was going to die on Jesus’ birthday… I was convinced that this was my fate; it was the end of my life… whereas the logical side of me couldn’t figure out why this was happening to me and wondered if this was really how I would go out……

When the blood was tested, the doctor returned about 10 minutes later to give us the diagnosis… I was finally about to learn what the hell had been wrong with me for that past week……

Evidently, I had contracted a rare and brutal virus known as myocarditis. It’s an inflammation of the heart muscle, and by my understanding of it, it’s a type of disease that weakens the aortic walls of the heart with an apparently corrosive fluid that lines the middle layer until the heart’s walls eventually weaken to the point of collapsing… That night, everything involving Danny, Jake, and Zorek… it all just stopped circulating in my mind…… I had no brain power to spend on their current state of being; I needed to focus on surviving this very real affliction… that was the _only_ thing I could afford to think about……

It turned out that my case of myocardial infection was a milder one, but it’s more common in adults and is an uncommon disease to begin with… my suspicions were proven correct as it can indeed be fatal if help isn’t sought immediately…… All things considered, since it started the night after my birthday, my mother and I rationalized that it must have been unwittingly transmitted by a worker at Friendly’s… something I ate that night had been carrying the virus…… As a precaution, we both agreed to never eat at Friendly’s ever again after that and later went in search of a different restaurant to take its place – eventually settling on a pretty enticing one known as Fuddruckers. I have nothing against Friendly’s itself, and if you want to eat there then it’s your prerogative… but considering I was put through hell around Christmas time and nearly died from something they served me, I’ve chosen _not_ to eat there at my own risk……

When the details of myocarditis continued to flood forth, the doctor ultimately decided to put me on a stretcher and transport me to a nearby children’s hospital where I would probably be staying for a while…… I could never forget the time I was wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher, its sirens blaring as it sped down the street…… I couldn’t _believe_ that was happening to me…… and I could tell it wasn’t just another fantasy or some highly realistic nightmare……

…… this was unrelenting reality at its _absolute worst_ for me……

My mother followed us the whole way there… I can’t even imagine what was going through her head when this happened…… I don’t ever want to…… I just know that we eventually made it to the children’s hospital and I was taken to another room… My mother and a doctor were talking and it was about 3 or 4 a.m. at that point… I craved sleep more than anything at that moment, but I wouldn’t let myself rest my eyes… I couldn’t close them…… If I had, I was afraid that it might be forever……

After hearing the doctor say something about my breast bone and displaying my knowledge by asking if he means the sternum, I hoped that it would show the doctor that I was intelligent enough to be clued in on the full information about what was going on with me and that he didn’t think I was just a naïve child… but my eyelids were weighing heavy and I couldn’t take the strain any longer… I asked if it was okay for me to sleep and he said it was perfectly fine – even encouraged. I just did so, and eventually woke up the next morning in a hospital bed, sharing a room with a much younger kid who was watching “Between the Lions” on the TV. I used to love that show as a little kid, but at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be home and healthy again…… I knew that there was no telling how long I’d be kept in that hospital room, but I eventually got a room to myself somehow… I don’t remember how this came to pass; it’s likely that my mother just paid extra for it.

I think I was already changed into a hospital gown and definitely had an IV needle in my left wrist. I couldn’t feel it even though I knew the needle ran deep, but at least I wasn’t hooked up to life support…… as far as I knew anyway… More importantly, my mother never once left my side unless it was to go home and get something to make my stay there more tolerable…… She brought me two remaining Bionicles from Christmas to build there to pass the time (I still have them in my closet in fact, and remember their names as Mantax and Takadox – fish-like Bionicle villains that were black and blue in color respectively). I remember how everyone’s always knocking hospital food, but it wasn’t all that bad… it must have just been a rumor… I woke up in the late hours of the next night, shocked but pleasantly relieved that I wasn’t experiencing any pains in my chest for once… a nurse was standing beside me, working on a heart monitor I believe… she simply told me that everything’s fine and that I can go back to sleep, but not before asking if I was feeling any pain in my chest. I simply said no and she replied by saying that hopefully it doesn’t come back then, but if it does they’ll be ready. I’d never felt more reassured and found it easy to just drift back into a deep sleep… I don’t remember if my mother was in the room or asleep or any specifics really… I was too groggy and barely conscious as it was…… I even thought I saw a young boy staring at me from across the room at the foot of my bed…… it wasn’t Danny, this was a different blond kid who was definitely smaller and was oddly reflective…… wrapped in gold…… Part of me wondered if I had seen an angel on earth, but I must have been in a state of hypnagogia… asleep but awake all at once…… Regardless of where my mother was at the time, I awoke to find her at my bedside the next morning…

I spent about three days at that hospital. I assumed since I apparently wasn’t going through any other heart pain for two nights straight… that my prayer must have been answered…… there was also the matter of whatever medicine they injected into me through the IV needle to hopefully expunge the virus… Unfortunately though, I was forced to stay the whole three days for testing and more preventative measure… On the final day at the hospital, my mother actually brought and hooked up my Playstation 2 console to the TV there. I didn’t want to risk the Wii console getting stolen, so I just asked for the PS2 at the time. I spent the final few hours playing that, until I was finally given a clean bill of health… They removed the IV needle from my wrist and a bandage was placed on the punctured spot… I changed back into my own clothes, and my mother packed everything up…… For the first time in three days, I was finally going to get to sleep in my own bed again…… anyone who’s been in the hospital for a prolonged amount of time knows that the feeling is utterly indescribable…… Home is where the heart is, but mine was virtually trapped in hell for what felt like an eternity…… Yet somehow, I made it out alive and almost unscathed… I needed to take two different types of medicines daily to keep any remnants of the virus at bay, and a year later, I needed to go in to test if I had a heart murmur from the disease, which thankfully I did not…

To this day, my heart is still permanently weakened…… On extremely rare occasions, it feels like the muscle is being strained and everything on the left side of my chest aches a bit, but I’m certain that it’s just residual damage from the now destroyed myocardial virus…… It’s never _anything_ like it used to be…… After that experience, I would never be the same again… god only knows if my life span was shortened as a result of it, but I was just grateful to be alive…… It seemed to be a miracle, but my prayer and the prayers of my family were all heard… I don’t know if my possible guardian angel of an uncle played a part as well, but I genuinely believe that he did…… and I know that I made a promise to God… it was more so bargaining, but a promise nonetheless… Had I survived that ordeal, I would become a better person… I would at least try my absolute hardest to change……

That time in the hospital and the closest call of my entire life were both the ultimate wake-up calls…… I stopped brooding at school and tried to make an effort to learn for once… I adopted Colin’s methods and eventually weaned myself off of them. If someone ever needed assistance, I was even more inclined to lend a helping hand… I’d gone from a C and D student to A’s, B’s, and the occasional C from time to time. I stopped behaving darkly and tried to do well in school… I unlocked my latent potential…… and everything changed for the better……

Sometime afterward on the same day that I returned home from that hospital, I was finally in a position that was mentally healthy enough to allow Danny to return to my life… He was worried to hell and back, but I assured him that everything was okay…… I figured that maybe I deserved it, to some very small extent…… I needed that reality check and I certainly received it…… I truly thought I was going to die that day on the night of December 25th, 2007…… I thought that God was ready to take me in…… Thankfully, this was not the case… I wasn’t ready to go yet… and I never did…… It’s also worth mentioning that I used to be more loyal to the devil than I was to God because I felt more at home with the villainous side of things…… Whenever I would play with my action figures as a kid, I would always play the villain and my cousin would be the heroes… Over time, I eventually stopped taking sides and alternated which team I would join… I’m now more neutral than ever as far as good and evil is concerned…… I don’t play favorites in that regard, but I know now more than ever what it’s like to inflict harm on someone deliberately…… I know how awful it feels to hurt someone and to be hurt back because of it…… I’ve since learned that we’re all just so much better off tending to our own affairs and trying to be the best people we can so as to avoid conflict and inevitable retaliation… I’ve learned to basically pick and choose my battles…

Despite finally learning this important life lesson, Danny and I would still never be able to truly get back to normalcy until we finally rescued Jakey from the current devil in our midst: Zorek……

We still had exactly one week before it was time to go back to school… It was December 29th, 2007, and I wasn’t about to let Jakey remain in captivity for a moment longer…… Danny and I decided to spend the entire day coming up with a plan to save him, but it was all for naught……

The fact that Zorek didn’t attack me during my time in the hospital is suitable evidence that I had at least _some_ sense of mercy for myself… but the moment I was released from their care, Danny and I both became fair game for the sadistic sorcerer’s diabolical schemes……

…… It was finally time for Danny and me to see what had become of our younger brother…… in what was sure to be the final showdown with one of my most memorable personal demons by far……


	13. The Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you think you've got someone all figured out… That their intentions are as plain as day, and you use this knowledge to rebel…  
> But in a world as cold as ours, nothing is ever in black and white… and answers never come as easy as we would like them to…
> 
> It's the final countdown… Danny and I are fully determined to banish that insufferable personal demon out of our lives for good… But as we soon discover, evil always has a way of catching you off guard… Outmatched, outsmarted, and completely out of time… Could my now fragile heart really spell the end of everything we've worked so hard for?…

Even after narrowly surviving the horrific medical ordeal that left me hospitalized in real life, I still continued to surprise myself every day…… by the constant reminder of just how far my subconscious mind would go in order to challenge me in ways no sane person would ever ask for……

… After all, there’s a clear distinction between the words “challenge” and “torture”……

But despite all of that mental strain, I would _never_ permit myself to fail when faced with certain doom… I knew deep down that I would either prevail or I would fall… there was nothing in between… and in order to ensure the former would always prove as the outcome, I designed a bold but seemingly foolproof feature to my fantastical identity that could survive against all odds if my life was to ever be put in any _real_ danger in the future……

I sat in my black swivel chair that I had turned around in order to face Danny who was perched on his imaginary bed… We were both contemplating any possible advantage we had over Zorek that we could use to locate and hopefully free our baby brother… Needless to say, it was a job easier said than done……

Danny eventually chimed in with the first suggestion of the night… but unfortunately, I could tell that even he knew that it wasn’t going to achieve our desired result…

“He has control over darkness right? Maybe we could just find a way to light up the whole cavern… then he’d be powerless,” he offered, unenthusiastically but carefully spoken.

“Shadows, actually…” I clarified for him… I wasn’t disappointed with his dud of an idea since we were both just brainstorming. I continued…

“He controls the shadows. That’s why he couldn’t do anything to fight back when I extinguished all the light… If he controlled the _darkness_ , we’d be dead right now…”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, but I knew he wasn’t discouraged. Heck, his idea was more than I had to offer… Danny was mathematically adept, and he _was_ fairly intelligent… but his personality was more so akin to that of a playful trickster… To say that devising a rescue strategy like this was outside of his comfort zone would be an understatement… But I knew that however we chose to attack, we needed to make use of our most valuable assets… We couldn’t forget what we had at our disposal.

“Whatever we do…” I started, thinking carefully about how to convey my next words to Danny since I knew it was an oddly touchy subject for him… “… we should really go see Will Weevil and look through the Prize-in-a-Can selections… we can’t underestimate the ability to use even _more_ tech like this watch,” I said expressively, holding out my wrist with the watch securely fastened on it to drive the point home. Danny just shifted his weight on the bed and folded his arms in response…

“Dude, there’s gotta be a catch to those things; I don’t trust them at all…” Danny _really_ had some vendetta against Prize-in-a-Can for some reason… How could he not see that future technology could give us the edge we needed in order to finally one-up Zorek?… I wasn’t prepared for what he said next though… I hadn’t even considered it until he brought up the idea…

“Jay, you _just_ got back from the hospital… For all we know, using that watch so much is what did that to you in the first place…”

My throat went tight after he said that… Apart from the fact that he’d technically used the watch nearly as much as I had, it was definitely a valid point… and that only made the outlook even more unsettling…… what if _he_ was next……?

Danny realized he’d frightened me a little and apologized, saying he didn’t mean to scare me, but I just grunted in acknowledgement… I was too focused on questioning _why_ I had to suffer so much that holiday season… What _really_ caused me that type of heart disease?… Was it karma?… Did I contract it from the food at Friendly’s?… Was it that vanilla cake that was so graciously gifted to me on my birthday that night?… I will never know this answer… I’ll never know the truth… All I will ever know is that it _did_ happen, and that I turned out as a better man because of it… But in that moment, I suspected foul play… I truly thought that the demons in my head had some hand in it…

It angered me…… tore away at my psyche… For reasons I don’t quite remember, it made me think of the Damned brothers… Maybe I blamed the devil at the time, and the accusations gravitated toward them considering they were hell spawns… I remembered that cruel trick that Andy played on us as if it was yesterday… preying on our trust like it was some child’s plaything…

It was then that I began to wonder… were the Children of the Damned _above_ even Zorek?… Were those entities born from hell actually above his jurisdiction?… _Beyond his_ _power?_ …

Then, amid my darkest thoughts, I happened upon an idea that was more cunning than I thought I could be capable of conceiving… Curious about how Danny would react, I shared it with him in earnest…

“What if…” I started, gauging his attentive reaction… “… we try out a trick that our old buddy Andy showed us a few months ago…” I said wryly… Danny seemed stunned that I’d ever suggest such a thing…

“You seriously wanna risk inviting _them_ back into our lives?… Those kids were _psycho!_ ”

He’d clearly never met Mike and Ricky then… The Children of the Damned were terrifyingly sane, but appeared to personify the purest form of evil… I humored Danny though.

“So is Zorek. We need to fight fire with fire, no pun intended.” The pun truly wasn’t intentional… my mind has simply always had a habit of choosing words that pertain to the situation and it unfortunately has no filter as far as something as inconsequential as puns are concerned… Danny seemed leery about the whole thing, but I was sure that he’d understand why I proposed a plan involving deception once I fleshed out the idea a bit more…

“Think about it… If we make Zorek _think_ we’re giving ourselves up to him, then we’ll be able to take him out when his guard’s down. He always knows when we’re at our weakest but he _underestimates us_ … He’ll think we’re helpless when we’re _not_.” I tried to summon the full extent of my powers of persuasion, and it seemed I was getting through to him. He knew it was a big risk, but if we structured the plan more effectively, we could potentially pull this off…

“… Do you really think we’ll be able to _trick_ him like that?... No offense, but you’re not much of an actor…” he replied, smirking to himself… I rolled my eyes, but he wasn’t wrong… Throughout the whirlwind of activity going on in my head, I usually remained entirely still in the real world… I seldom had a reason to make up excuses for why I was behaving strangely…

… I had no reason to lie… so I never tried picking up the skill the way Danny had to better suit his prankster presentation…

I scratched my head; finally piecing together that if Danny and I were going to do this _right_ … it wasn’t something that would be completed in a night… We would need at least a few days to prepare…

“… Think maybe you can teach me then?…” I asked with a hint of a smile. I knew he’d get a kick out of that, but the truth was… I _did_ need his help… I could tell basic lies, but feigning heavy emotions was something far out of my league… I needed to act submissive, not angry… Would Zorek be able to detect the vengeance in my eyes?… The fury in my heart?… Could he _see_ into our very souls?… Danny’s eyes lit up when I requested his assistance in that department. He might as well have heard an ice cream truck driving down our street…

“I bet I could, but you’re gonna have to commit.” Danny stroked his chin jokingly and assessed me from across the room.

…… And that’s when all hell broke loose……

Without any warning, both our eyes were violently assaulted by a blindingly bright light… A fierce shining that filled the whole room from corner to corner…… My corneas burned in its wake; I had no choice other than to shield my eyes…… The last time I’d experienced such devastatingly overwhelming radiance was……

No…… it _couldn’t be_ ……

My still recovering heart was racing with anxious anticipation… The light shrank away and subsided until a small but lean figure slowly started to come into view through the remnants of the deep glow… I didn’t pay attention to what Danny was doing at the time, but I’d presume his eyes were locked on the mysterious form just as mine were… Nothing could make me look away…… The experience was beautiful and humbling at the same time…… It genuinely appeared as though an angel had touched down on Earth before our very eyes…… But as the figure became more vivid with each passing second, my stomach lurched and a chill ran up my spine…

Somehow I knew… that the nightmare was back in full force……

The last of the ethereal light faded away to furnish a very clear view of our new enigmatic visitor… A young blond boy bearing an unyielding stare of considerable determination…… he appeared to be about 8 or 9 years old with a full head of slightly curly, golden hair and large, seemingly impressionable bluish-grey eyes fixed upon his unreadable face… Thin bangs hung down his forehead slightly more than Danny’s did, but the most discernible sight of all was that he was dressed head to toe in a slim and polished suit of what appeared to be golden armor…… The lustrous sheen emanating from its metallic surface was breathtaking… but intimidating as well…… It didn’t help that, fixed in his clenched fingers, was what could only have been an authentic sword… a Flamberge perhaps…… I remember it having serrated edges, but it was nothing particularly ornate… The sword was slung over his right shoulder, and he met our gazes with an unshakable resolve…… I exchanged glances with Danny… He was every bit as awestruck as I was……

Neither of us could get out a word… This mysterious kid in golden armor plating left us completely dumbfounded… but I strongly suspected that this was the same boy who was standing over my bed in the hospital that one night…… The one I’d regarded as a guardian angel……

A full minute must have passed by before anyone broke the ice… All I could do was stare, and the boy appeared to be standing at attention… waiting for our first move before making his own……

His appearance was mighty despite his youth… He seemed well-trained…… I gave Danny a measured look when I was finally starting to regain composure… He returned it with a knowing nod… We had both established by then that it was the look that signified our inseparable bond… That no matter what hurdle came next, we’d face it together…

The armored child glanced disinterestedly at Danny… If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that the kid had somehow read my thoughts… and he wasn’t about to give me the luxury of having Danny to bail me out……

Quick as a flash, he warped behind me through a fleeting trail of light particles and an unearthly humming sound… Before I had time to react, he wrapped his free hand around my chest from the back of my chair… Next thing I knew, the world I was in had blurred and swirled for a microsecond before I found myself staring into the dark, dampened walls of a cavern that was dimly lit by only a few torches hung overhead……

I was thrust back into Zorek’s underground lair… and only then did it become painfully obvious as to who this unnamed child truly was……

My heart sank… I didn’t even know how to respond…… The child released his hold on me and pushed me into the ground face-first with the same hand… It was baffling how such a little kid could have such strength and concentration… Especially if he turned out to be who I thought he was……

It was impossible to be sure… but I’d vaguely recognized that face…… and those stormy blue eyes…… In the end, there was no denying it… regardless of how little sense it made……

… I knew that I was currently face-to-face with my newborn brother…

Parents make jokes about how their children grow up so fast, but this was completely ridiculous… More than anything, I was struck with a burning curiosity of just how the hell my 1-week-old brother had grown so quickly… He had aged several years in the span of what couldn’t have been longer than 5 measly days…… What the _fuck_ did Zorek do to him……? What fresh hell had his formerly innocent eyes witnessed firsthand……?

I needed answers… I needed to speak to him…… whose side was he _really_ on?…

“W-who a-are you…?” I stammered nervously… fully aware that I wasn’t even close to ready to hear what he’d say next…

But he didn’t answer… not verbally anyway… He just pointed his blade toward the corridor sculpted into the cavern that I knew would ultimately lead me to Zorek’s inner sanctum… It was a silent order for me to start walking in that direction……

I went along with it… At that point, I would have done virtually _anything_ to have him back in the family with Danny and me… I had half-suspected he was already six feet under or ritually sacrificed by that monster, so seeing him alive and healthy was a rush of relief for me in itself……

As I slowly trekked down the hall, he followed closely behind… blade to my back… matching my every step…… There wasn’t any sign of Zorek’s reptilian guards… It seemed the bastard had finally learned to be at least somewhat civil……

We reached the colossal set of stone doors that almost immediately gave me painful flashbacks of the last time I’d seen them… We stopped in front of them as they slowly slid open to grant us entry…

I hadn’t the slightest idea of what Zorek truly wanted from me… but I had decided then and there that this was my _final_ chance to make things right……

Right here, right now…… it was all or nothing……

We entered the chamber…… I couldn’t help but give one final side-long glance over my shoulder at Jake… He was so aloof and emotionally detached…… I was certain that regardless of how well Zorek had trained him in the art of combat, he had never known the slightest modicum of compassion throughout his entire accelerated life……

Speaking of that wannabe devil, Zorek wasn’t seated upon his twisted throne that time… He was hovering over the pit-like chasm on the east side of the room… Arms folded and eyes trained ravenously on my throat…… He craved revenge so much that he could hardly contain himself……

He floated above the same pit that housed the acidic liquid that he dangled Danny over in order to taunt and torment me… But since the room was dead silent and there was no trace of sizzling in the atmosphere, it wasn’t hard to tell that he had since removed it all to prevent a repeat of the last encounter in the off chance that Danny would be joining us… Unfortunately for me, his new “minion” had served him quite well……

I was completely alone… Taking a final stand against my worst enemy and one of my most cherished family members…… _without_ Danny to back me……

Zorek remained airborne, not moving an inch from that spot above the abyss that was no less than ten meters in length… He beckoned me as Jake continued to watch impassively… I hesitantly walked into the room… the torches on the walls had since been relit, and the glassy black floor appeared to be spotless… no residual damage from the acid that Danny had spilled a while back……

Zorek slowly but steadily descended as he glided toward me… a look of deadly malice in his eyes…… I swallowed nervously, but maintained a steadfast expression… I wasn’t about to let him win, but I needed to make him think I was willing to hear out his demands…

He eventually ceased moving entirely… I found myself staring coldly into his shadowed face once again…… Even though I couldn’t see the slightest contour, I was almost sure that he was giving off a fiendish grin from behind the perpetual darkness beneath his hood… I finally spoke up…… This was going to _end_ … _TONIGHT_ ……

“What do you want from me?” I inquired as coolly and calmly as I could muster… The demon in the cloak simply raised a scabbed, rotting hand upward… toward the roughly sculpted ceiling…… To my great surprise, Physic Bender materialized from thin air and began to exert its powers by slowly swirling its hands in circular motions… With the ability to distort the laws of physics, it was somehow able to spread its supernatural energy over the ceiling of the cavern and dissolve it… giving way not to a landslide, but to the moon overhead… To the untrained eye, there wasn’t even a moon in the sky… It was invisible… lightless from our perspective; a “new moon”… I couldn’t make out a single star in the sky… Everything was a black void above me……

Physic Bender then unceremoniously descended toward Jake with its inhuman posture… It seemed to be standing guard; protecting him from retaliation……

I was mystified, but Zorek didn’t give me a moment to process what was going on… Rather, his outstretched hand trembled violently as more of that blackened electricity surged through it…… I knew exactly what was coming next……

Thinking quickly under pressure, I manipulated the flames from the torches surrounding him and lashed them out at him in fiery tendrils… He was much more dynamic this time around… swiftly evading the attack by diving downward and allowing the flames to combust into each other… He then glided rapidly along the ground, never daring to lose sight of me… as he aggressively reached his claws into the ground for his next assault… It was like hearing nails on a chalkboard…… they skid against the ground noisily throughout Zorek’s unfaltering dash…

The irritating sound might have been to disorient me, but the real plan of attack came after the fact… Enormous fingers rose from the ground, composed of a smoking, shadowy manifestation of a hand that resembled Zorek’s… The fingers threatened to close in on me until crushing me in the palm of the hand, but I managed to ward them off with a pre-emptive sea of red-hot flames…

With everything I had riding on the line… there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to lose this fight……

Zorek responded with a deadly cluster of electricity that erupted from the ground beneath me… I was hit dead-on, screaming in pain from the hundreds of volts that involuntarily surged through my body… Zorek saw this as an opening and immediately ensnared me in the same shadowy mist that engulfed Danny all those months ago…… I struggled with every ounce of my strength to wrench myself free, but the shadows I was embraced in were unnaturally resilient… There was nothing I could do…… Zorek had me right where he wanted me……

Zorek approached me, confident and reserved… He reached out toward my neck and tightly wrapped his fingers around it… I could feel the hatred in his grip…… And then it started to burn…… until my throat and entire body shook uncontrollably from a foreign influence…… Zorek had wreathed his electricity around my throat through the hand that was grasping it…… It traveled through my body until I could barely maintain consciousness anymore…… It should have hurt more, but it wasn’t enough to kill me…… I could smell my insides having been freshly scorched…… I wearily turned my head toward the entrance… looking off into Jake’s direction……

He was watching it all play out from a distance with Physic Bender still by his side… but he wasn’t turning away…… he wasn’t even closing his eyes…… He was about to watch me die horribly at the hands of his new master… he didn’t react, he just watched on blankly……

It was then that all hope I ever had of bringing him back… was lost forever… My brother was gone…… replaced by a coldhearted scion…… One of my main reasons for pushing forward through all this internal turmoil had been shattered before my heart and mind……

But there was still Danny…… and this demented bastard was _dreaming_ if he thought I was going to leave _him_ behind the same way our brother had……

I wasn’t quite ready to give in, but Zorek’s next move distracted me beyond all reason… He took both hands and grabbed the rim of his hood…… He pulled it back slowly……

And I was finally face-to-face with my sworn enemy…… looking him dead in the eyes…… as I could barely stifle a scream when my eyes pored over the unsightly visage of that unholy creature……


	14. A Blessing and a Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quite possibly the best advice that anyone could give... is to stay true to what you believe in, no matter how hopeless it seems.
> 
> The anticipated final showdown with Zorek reaches a crucial climax as pivotal revelations spring up at every turn... the face of evil is finally divulged, Jake's inborn abilities are thrown into the fray, and a jaw-dropping discovery about my own surreal existence is brought to light in this life-defining final confrontation with Zorek!
> 
> This also marks the first chapter to have a corresponding song recommendation that fits the mood and plot of the story line as you're reading. There will be many more to come in later chapters, but always remember that these songs are only recommended, and therefore optional. It is entirely up to you if you choose to listen to them or not.
> 
> Recommended song for this chapter:  
> "Coming Home" by Avenged Sevenfold

In that one, seemingly perpetual moment… as I hung limp in the hellacious clutches of that damnable, black-hearted bastard Zorek… as the unnervingly freezing chill of the unexplainable night sky hanging over our heads coursed through me in frequent, icy blasts of frigid air…… and as all hope in my heart steeply declined to the point of inescapable despair…… I stared deeply into the “face” that has haunted the most unspeakably terrifying corners of my mind for months on end……

…… and for the very first time…… it was staring directly back at _me_ ……

I had dreamed of this moment… in my darkest nightmares…… wondering… speculating with a sinfully deadly curiosity of just _what_ it was that concealed itself beneath that twisted cowl……

My greatest fear at the time was that Zorek had been more than a product of dark forces manifesting themselves into a masked demonic entity… Deep down, I feared that his face belonged to someone I knew… someone who I cared about, and whom I believed had cared for me in return…… I didn’t suspect anyone in particular… just that it was _somebody_ ……

Thank god then… that this was fortunately not the case.

Once again, a bizarre combination of both relief and terror rushed through my body… I couldn’t bring myself to scream… I only stared disgustedly in mute horror……

Zorek’s “face” had turned out to be a disturbing conglomeration of an altered snake skull with scraps of grey, rotting flesh peeling from the surface in seemingly random locations… The soulless but fervently glowing red eyes that I’d known all too well burned brighter than ever now that the darkness formerly surrounding them had been lifted… A blood-red rune was somehow carefully carved into the forehead of the deathly creature’s cranium, a spot that was devoid of flesh entirely… What I found most unsettling though… was the fact that even beyond the barely sustained hunks of scabbed flesh… the skull itself was sporadically splintered and fractured with repulsive, bulbous, organ-like abominations of nature covered in veins protruding and throbbing out from within the fissures of decaying bone… The globular, tremulous muscles were amassed together with thin, tiny tendrils flailing from the edges… It was quite literally the crux of what children’s nightmares are made of……

I knew that Zorek revealing the horrifically malformed remains of his face to me served some greater purpose other than to just strike fear into my damaged heart… I looked away, turning my head toward my transmuted little brother… Even amongst the exposure of Zorek’s unforgettably fearsome visage, I couldn’t abandon that final iota of hope that maybe… just _maybe…_ Jake _might_ still possess enough humanity after whatever abominable conversion his mind underwent… to _turn away_ from the hellish sight of his master’s true face…… He was only a small child… Sure, he appeared to be older now but it _must_ have been smoke and mirrors invoked by Physic Bender’s magic… A sight like that would be sure to mentally scar him for years……

Much to my dismay, when I turned to face him and gauge what should have been a petrified reaction from a fragile young kid… he remained as expressionless as ever alongside Physic Bender… and looked on as if it was all as natural a scene as a civilized get-together between two humans…… He was completely unfazed by the nightmarish spectacle that his uncaring eyes had just witnessed firsthand……

I shuddered… visibly taken aback by the nonchalance my inscrutable brother was exhibiting… It was obvious to everyone in the room that this was nothing he hadn’t already seen before…… and the creeping thought that slithered its way into my mind was more than I could stand…… The truth was that he had indeed seen his master’s face at least once in the past…… and chances were high that it was while he was still a newborn infant……

The last of his innocence was gone… It was absolutely obliterated at the youngest possible age…… by a monster under his bed that he would never be able to outrun…… a fear that couldn’t be overcome…… the same monstrous piece of shit that stole his life away from him when he was at his most vulnerable……

 _How he must have screamed…… how he must have trembled and cowered the moment he was exposed to something so abhorrently gruesome…_ _and how Zorek must have reveled in watching it all unfold, cackling with maniacal glee……_

The thoughts just kept flooding into my head, unrelenting and unbearably infuriating……

_The sheer terror from that experience he was forced to endure must have damn near given him a heart attack… What other psychologically devastating imagery could he have been exposed to?… What the fuck has that **dead man** turned him into?…… Jake’s perception of the world we lived in had been ruthlessly distorted **forever** ……_

It was the _final_ straw… Zorek was not long for this world…… I would _personally_ see to that…… I held myself steady for now, but the _instant_ that Zorek let his guard down, I would tear him to bloody ribbons for what he did to both of my little brothers…… Mark my fucking words……

That being said, if Zorek held any true motivation driving him to end my life, he most likely would have ordered Jake to strike the final blow… but since he was merely trying to slay a tenacious enemy, the thought must have escaped his mind. Rather, he chose to deal with me personally instead of prolonging the torment regarding my family ties. Stealing Jake away was just a bonus to make it hurt more… If he already had Physic Bender enlisted as an underling, then he could have taken all of us down whenever he chose.

Zorek shot daggers at me in the dim firelight one last time before carrying out his master plan… I tried to put on a poker face to remain unreadable… I pretended that the electric torture had seared me into submission, and Zorek seemed to believe it… If there was _anything_ that the both of us agreed on that day… it was that one of us would _not_ be walking away this time.

For me, the plan was to immediately teleport home with the technological wrist watch as soon as I freed my hands from the tangible shadows that bound me. I would then grab Danny and teleport right back to the underground chamber… The moment we vanquished Zorek together once and for all, I intended to seek out a Prize-in-a-Can item that could harmlessly erase someone’s memories… and use it on Jakey… The challenge of defeating Zorek was nonexistent at this point… His susceptibility to brutal damage infliction was shockingly high… All Danny and I needed to do was grab and rip away the tentacles emanating from the throbbing, disgusting organism growing inside of his skull… and that alone should cripple the ancient mutated bastard with severe agony from which he may never recover.

The removal of Zorek’s hood and unveiling of his face turned out to be our greatest facilitator for victory… because it exposed a game-changing weakness that could kill that demon at long last.

Obviously though, Zorek wouldn’t have run the risk of revealing his shocking weak point unless he intended for me to never be able to make use of it. I had my own plan well in the works… but I was still in the dark about what Zorek had in store……

He portentously hovered closer to me, so close I could feel his putrid breath on my frost-bitten face… and then my left wrist started to burn in blinding pain, right underneath my skin…… as the incomprehensible symbol on his forehead began to glow with intensity tantamount to that of his eyes… I almost immediately flashed back to the moment where Zorek shot into the air and then rocketed down toward me in a gaseous form like the hell spawn he was… Danny was beside me, holding up his arms in a strained stance… Next thing I knew, Zorek clamped onto my wrist with merciless grip strength… He fled shortly thereafter, and now I knew precisely why……

 _Everything_ had led up to this moment… The opening in the ceiling that displayed the clear night sky and its lightless celestial body, the assault made on my wrist about 7 months ago that was so easily capitulated and never brought up again until now, the mysterious rune etched into Zorek’s skull… even Physic Bender and Jake standing idly by, waiting patiently for what was sure to be my imminent destruction…

Zorek had prepared a sort of ritual that required at least three “ingredients”… For the moon to be enveloped in total darkness, and for that darkness to be cast down upon us… an implanted affliction in my wrist that Zorek elicited himself… and to tie it all together, the blood rune in Zorek’s head glowing and invoking some unknown power when the previous two necessary elements came together in perfect succession. 

It was a ritual arranged specifically for me… A moment of truth that would ultimately decide whether I would live… or die… and I was so unprepared for this convoluted type of attack that there was nothing I could do other than to accept my fate… whatever it may be……

“Now… you **_DIE!!!_** _”_ Zorek bellowed, placing his index and middle finger to his forehead to augment the rune’s power… For a few seconds, it felt like my own life was being forcibly ripped away from me… as though he was breathing poison into my very soul…

Zorek was laughing maniacally as he watched the light leave my eyes… His cackling echoed through the vast chamber and out into the night sky above us… Jake and Physic Bender stayed silent, but likely watched the execution transpire without batting an eye. I could never forget what an awful scene it was… I was suffering in front of an audience… defeated and helpless… I couldn’t fight back…… That cowardly bastard thought of every possible contingency and took measures to ensure he would never fail in this carefully calculated attempt on my life…… To think I was about to perish all because of some improbable, cowardly means of automatically erasing my very essence from existence…… That _coward……_

They say that as you’re about to die, your entire life tends to flash before your eyes. As your mind registers the fact that you’re about to shut down all critical functions and bite the dust, adrenalized memories play back in hyper-speed and you recall as much as you can store before it all finally ends for good… But this wasn’t occurring for me… No rush of adrenaline accompanied this experience, and not a single memory had resurfaced… This moment _should_ have been my demise… but it’s key to remember: I still have a lot to live for, and this was only taking place in the confines of my _mind,_ not in reality.

I wasn’t dying…… I felt the burning sensation in my wrist work its way into my vital organs… I could feel death’s peculiarly warm embrace try to pull me under, but I was somehow resistant… It’s almost like I was immune…… to death itself……

Rather than destroy me, Zorek had mistakenly pushed me to a call so close… an experience in my fictional world that was _so_ life-threatening… that I was finally able to realize a truth that had eluded me for so long…… Something that I never would have imagined could be possible in this or any other lifetime… for _anyone or anything_ ……

I finally realized… that the products of my imagination were _incapable_ of killing me…… not as long as I sustained the will to live…… In this world, I was what could only have been described as…… immortal……

 _…Immortality…_ the gift of everlasting life… It’s an enchantment that _everyone_ could only _dream of…_ A coveted power that could make a world of difference for _anyone_ fortunate enough to possess it…

My eyes finally shot open in shock… I gasped softly in bewilderment as I let it all sink in… The fact that I was virtually indestructible…… Zorek was intrigued to see that I was still holding onto my life by what could have only been a flimsy thread… He increased the power of the mark on his forehead, and I could feel the surge of the invisible force waging a direct attack on me from inside… but once again… it was to no avail……

I glanced over my shoulder toward Jake and Physic Bender… The latter was primed for battle, in a tense stance that suggested an eagerness for confrontation… The former’s eyes seemed to have widened and his mouth was oh so slightly agape… For the first time ever, I had finally caught Jake’s interest… I couldn’t help but shake my lowered head gently… eyes closed, and smiling to myself in astonishment…… The smile faded though almost as quickly as it appeared… and my eyes locked themselves firmly on Zorek with an expression on my face that screamed unwavering determination in every possible way……

Zorek lowered his own head menacingly… he could tell that something was wrong… His plan wasn’t working… Despite all that he’d done to ensure its success, I was still here… still unyielding _…_ and still very much alive…… Zorek bristled and scowled demonically in a fierce rage… the entire chamber pulsated briefly with the sudden exertion of his irritated energy… My eyes never strayed from his form… physically fragile and mentally desperate… In that moment, I felt truly invincible… He couldn’t kill me… he couldn’t even touch me…… In the final battle, we were going to _win……_

I meticulously weighed my options, knowing I couldn’t afford to make a single mistake in my escape plan… Zorek’s strategy had hit an unpredictable roadblock… now it was time to put _mine_ into action…… If I played my cards right… Danny, Jake, and I would all be returning home unscathed and Zorek would be reduced to ashes.

With renewed confidence, I looked over my shoulder again at Physic Bender. Even while compressed at my side, my hands lit up in accordance with the patch of ground directly beneath the platform where the sentient mannequin was standing… The obsidian beneath Physic Bender heated up briefly before exploding into a towering pillar of flame that engulfed the creature while leaving Jake completely untouched. As expected, Physic Bender screeched in agony, but to my great surprise… Jake lowered his sword and thrust his free hand outward to evidently shield Physic Bender with his own powers… A clear barrier had materialized itself over Physic Bender, but fortunately for me, it wasn’t helping his situation in any way… In fact, it only managed to contain the flames that were already eating away at him, trapping them inside with the deranged doll. Jake seemed to be panicking, knowing full well that what he was doing was only worsening the situation… I saw him glance nervously at his master…… I swear to god, he was worried that his foul-up would prompt punishment later…… And _that_ got my blood boiling in a frenzy of indignation…… Zorek would _never_ lay a hand on him again when this was over…… Jake would _finally_ regain the freedom he deserved……

I could hear Zorek begin to make a move from behind me, but I needed Physic Bender out of the picture first for the rest of my plan to work… Luckily, Jake disengaging the barrier he set up wasn’t enough to persuade Physic Bender to stick around… Filling the air with charred embers and chips of wood, his corporeal form was already starting to burn away. He retreated in his personal portal just as Zorek was charging up more of his inherent electricity… With Physic Bender gone, I turned back to Zorek and smirked knowingly at him… as I used my command over fire to extinguish every last torch in his chamber just as I had during our last encounter in that hellhole.

Almost immediately, the shadows ensnaring me dissolved and Zorek ferociously charged up an overabundance of blackly illuminated electricity in a vain attempt to light up the room. Thanks to the coruscating glow of his blood-red eyes and forehead rune, he had nowhere to hide while, in a sense of poetic justice, I was now the one taking refuge in the shadows. Meanwhile, I ran a few feet to my left and quickly pressed a side button on my watch to activate its built-in LED light, casting a bright blue backlight on the screen to make the digital characters readable. Before Zorek could track me with this indicator and fire all that electricity, I warped myself directly to Danny’s location with a sort of “speed dial” setting that automatically inputs recently implemented commands. It worked without fail, but I was surprised to find myself… in the warehouse of Prize-in-a-Can merchandise……

I whirled around in search of Danny and found him directly behind me, fiddling with… another teleportation wrist watch… The moment his eyes met mine, he dropped the thing and nearly jumped out of his own skin… It looked as though he couldn’t believe his eyes… I couldn’t imagine what he thought must have happened to me… but the fact that he willingly came to the Prize-in-a-Can headquarters and sifted through their selections for his own teleportation watch… I knew exactly what was going on… and I was momentarily overcome with the realization of just how much I must have meant to him……

“Jason!!! Is it really you??? I… I thought you were —…” he voiced hysterically, but trailed off rather than finishing the sentence. I knew this was a huge relief for him, but we had incredibly pressing matters and couldn’t get wrapped up in sentimentality right now… I tried my best to delicately explain the urgency of the situation to him…

“Yes, I’m fine, trust me, but Jakey… he needs us! You have to come back with me!” I conveyed briskly, already setting the watch’s destination for its previous location. Danny saw that this was extremely important, and while he must have had a surplus of questions for me, he instinctively obeyed… but that didn’t stop him from saying one thing as he frantically processed what was going on…

“O—okay, but you are _going_ to tell me what happened after this,” he demanded firmly. I just nodded vigorously as I grabbed his arm with the watch hand and pressed GO with my free one. He would have his fill of explanations… but _not_ now.

I could only pray that we weren’t too late… _I_ may have been immortal… but knowing Zorek, he had another target in mind… As Danny and I were warped back into the pitch-black chamber, I relit the torches to find my fears had been realized… On the floor, in a smoking heap with Zorek standing forebodingly over him in a crackling net of blackened electricity… was Jake… injured and completely at his mercy…… despite the fact that his customized Flamberge was still in hand……

My jaw dropped and my vision blurred… Seeing nothing but red, I lunged right at Zorek, screaming in unbridled fury… I ignited myself in a makeshift suit of rising flames with enough power to match Zorek’s mesh of lightning… We clashed head-on, as a flurry of sparks and flame danced and swirled around us… Zorek’s hood had since been pulled over his head again obscuring his countenance, but this time I reached out and tore it right off as it burned away from the scorching flames within my grasp… unafraid now to see what was hiding underneath… I got the same result as before: that nightmarish face with protruding, bulbous muscle and tentacles… The blinding light of Zorek’s shining red eyes was almost more than my corneas could take, but my resolve had never been stronger… I lashed out and clutched three tentacles – two in one hand, one in the other – and tugged as hard as I could… Whatever the hell was growing inside of Zorek’s skull shifted as I yanked, and it looked like his time was _finally_ up……

Unfortunately, Zorek’s pain was almost unsatisfying… He didn’t shriek or emit anything vocal other than grunting as I nearly uprooted his brains from his cranium… He fought to the bitter end and was struggling the whole way through… It took a while for him to join in, but Danny finally tried to assist me. As Zorek hurled torrid electricity at me from his mouth, Danny threw his hands onto the breaches in Zorek’s skull and flooded them with scalding hot water… The inside of Zorek’s skull was getting flushed out as I perpetuated his pain by setting fire to the tentacles I was gripping onto with all my might… It was here that Zorek’s final hour was postponed by the most aggravating obstacle by far……

Before we knew it, Danny and I were encased in a large, white, bubble-like dome that had forcibly separated us from Zorek… giving him time to recover from the death blows we were dealing him…… Danny was looking all over the room anxiously, but I knew exactly who caused this…… I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it……

With a troubled expression, I appraised Jake grimly from a few feet away… He was standing upright now with his sword drawn… and one hand held out to support the concentration of the barrier’s solidification…

I was livid… and I wasn’t sure this time if it was at Zorek or Jake himself… Even after all that physical abuse from Zorek… the haunting torture he must have put him through… Jake was _still_ completely loyal to him…… There was just no _fucking_ way……

Danny finally realized the same bombshell that was dropped on me mere minutes ago… That Jake had inherited powers of his own, and that he was using them to help _Zorek_ , the one who kidnapped, controlled, and subjected him to an unimaginable amount of horror for 5 days straight…… He was fighting back against his saviors…… his _family……_

Before Zorek himself could retaliate, Danny gave Jake a soft, pleading look. He seemed to regard Jake as delicately as if he was as fragile as glass… in spite of the gleaming armor that hardened his entire exterior.

“… So you _are_ our brother… But… please, you don’t want to help him! He has you brainwashed, remember what’s really important to you!” Danny shouted in his most convincing voice, and I have to hand it to him, he was damn good at this. Unfortunately, his sincere words practically bounced off of Jake as if his heart and mind were shielded by the same energy he was enclosing us in.

I followed Danny’s lead… and was grasping at straws for _any_ conceivable indication that Jake was still on our side…… From the moment we were reunited under the most horrible of circumstances, he displayed zero interest in either of us and seemed to exist only to serve his master… But I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was still something about him that shined like a beacon of hope and verified that he still held respect for us… that he still looked up to us……

“I don’t know what Zorek named you, but Danny’s right. You are your _own_ person! You have your own thoughts and emotions and your so-called ‘master’ tries to take them away along with your freedom! You saw my power, I can’t be stopped… and we both can _help_ _you!_ We can _free_ you! _”_

I tried my very best to reach out to him… to speak to the soul… but from within the transparent barrier of mysterious energy, I could see that his expression was unchanging… He was so far gone…… I glanced nervously at Zorek, who was recovering from his wounds at an accelerated rate…

“ _Please! Trust us, we are your family!”_ I screamed at the top of my lungs, hands still ignited in flame to provide an acceptable light source for the room, but he was either unable or unwilling to take my words to heart… Whatever the case, I needed to silence this distracting feeling on the tip of my tongue that could prove he was still in there… I thought hard about what it might be… I brainstormed to the best of my ability and spared no expense in trying to locate a memory that he was present in… and that proved his loyalty to _us_ instead of Zorek…

… And then… like a freight train… it _finally_ hit me.

I enthusiastically pressed my palms against the interior of the dome that was trapping me and stared directly at him with both sincerity and fortitude. Let’s see him get out of _this_ one…

“You were standing over my bed when I was at the hospital! You were scared for my safety and you watched over me to make sure I’d be okay! You _do_ care, just admit it!”

Danny shot me a stunned look, but my eyes were fixed on Jake… who had finally showed a trace of emotion… More than a trace in fact… he was suddenly as anxious as Danny and me… He was softly hyperventilating, and his eyes slowly drifted toward Zorek… the terrified expression on his face was palpable; a sharp contrast from how callous he’d looked up until this point… I redirected my gaze toward Zorek, who seemed to take this as some significant news… His eyes were trained on Jake, and he slowly tilted his head psychotically… carefully considering the shocking information he’d just learned… This heartless bastard; I was _not_ about to dig Jake’s own grave…… I turned back toward Jake, who was unable to meet his master’s eyes and was shaking in fear…

“He’s going to _kill_ you! You can’t let him! Danny and me have more than enough power to stop him, but you have to help us! _Please!”_ I screamed desperately, and Jake’s eyes quickly darted back to me when he heard this, his frightened expression unchanging…

“He’s not who you think he is! He’ll beat you senseless, _we’re_ the good guys! He’s _evil!!!”_ Danny chimed in with emotional ardor. Jake glanced over at him now… He was finally struggling over the choice that needed to be made… This was _not_ a one-sided fight anymore…… And our fate was in _his_ hands……

Zorek steadied himself and began to charge up electricity from beneath us, undoubtedly expecting to take us out from below while we were trapped in the dome of pure white energy. I thought I also saw smoke manifest itself near our feet as well… if I had to guess, he was probably planning to impale us with stalagmites composed of solid shadow…

Jake was trembling under the weight of the colossal decision he was expected to make. The internal conflict raging inside his mind over who to remain loyal to and who to betray was way too much for the poor kid… No child at his age should ever have to be put through any such situation… But I’d had enough of his advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome and I’d suffered all I could ever stand of Zorek for one lifetime… so I reached deep into my feelings and echoed the encouragement that was sure to tip the scales in our favor… for the _final_ time.

“We love you, Jakey… More than you’ll ever know… You are _everything_ to us… But it’s your life and it’s _your_ choice… It’s up to _you_ to decide what’s right… and whatever you pick, we won’t stop you……” I said solemnly, and Danny seemed shocked that I’d even dare to tempt fate by allowing him to choose what he thought was right… in the current position he was in now on Zorek’s side of the good/evil spectrum… But I gave him a stern look, and he was slowly starting to comprehend what I was trying to accomplish… He understood…

… If this wouldn’t work, then nothing would……

Jake was thunderstruck… He staggered slightly and gave his master one last, meaningful glance. Zorek was royally pissed off… he was through toying with us; he wanted us as dead as dirt, and he was about to get his wish… except for me, in which case he’d have to settle for inflicting excruciating pain. It’s a funny concept about immortality… You can withstand anything that comes your way without the fear of dying from it… but it won’t shield you from harm. Immortality is not invincibility, and in a pessimistic perspective, all it does is prolong one’s suffering before death whisks you away from the mounting pain in life… It was every bit a weakness as it was a strength… both a blessing and a curse of the highest degree……

Now that I was consciously aware of my immortal nature… what would my future hold?…… What would it mean for those around me whose lives were open to inevitable extermination?……

I didn’t have time to ponder those profound but imperative questions however, because Jake was still the fulcrum of this entire situation that could decide both of my brothers’ fates. And he was still as fragile and unstable as ever… To go against his master must have seemed unthinkable to him… but the promise of a brighter future – or even a future at all – must have pestered him greatly… Tantalizing but just out of his reach due to the overriding fear that his master would track him down and punish him viciously for his insubordination… no, for his _betrayal……_

Those final few seconds felt like an eternity… The clock was ticking down to Danny’s destruction, and Jake needed to act _quickly…_ It was now or never, and despite the inexorable stress of the situation, he knew that full well… He needed to decide now, or he would never get the chance to at all.

… That’s when I felt something click inside of me…

My heart was racing in my chest as I watched with bated breath… I can’t explain how, but I could sense a drastic change in Jake’s presence… the false courage he demonstrated before was instantly replaced with a spirited valor… the scared little kid hiding in a cold hard shell had transformed into a stanch warrior with unrivaled conviction who was ready to put everything on the line for what _he_ believed was most valuable to him.

He would never again need to see the world through the devil’s eyes.

It all ends here. With deadly determination in his eyes, Jake lowered his arm to dispel the energy field surrounding Danny and I, and not a moment too soon… Simultaneously, Zorek thrust both arms into the air to unleash a sweltering torrent of electricity from the earth that Danny and I had just barely managed to evade at the last second… Zorek was finally at wit’s end… this wasn’t just another loss for him… This time, he would surely pay with his _life._

I was momentarily petrified by what I experienced next… It wasn’t Danny or I who went on the attack… it was Jake himself…… He fiercely aimed both hands at his former master and generated another bubble-like dome that started at Zorek’s head and ended at his chest… But this was far more lethal than the identical prison that was used to restrain his previous victims… Zorek writhed in agony from the abrupt intrusion that cut deep into his skin, needling his flesh in a curved line that spanned along the width of his torso, and threatening to cleave him in two…… Fountains of blood burst forth from the ring-shaped puncture point, and as the crimson fluid exploded from his body painting the floor in red, I truly thought I was about to witness Zorek get cut in half that night……

Unfortunately, despite how inconceivably close Zorek was to knocking on death’s door, it wasn’t his time… He’d obviously prepared for such treason, and in his most desperate moment of excruciation, screeched an ear-piercing cry that had a frighteningly adverse effect on Jake… He immediately recoiled and brought his hands to his ears to shut out the sound… Every ounce of bravery in him had dissipated almost immediately, and Zorek was freed from the squeezing slice of the dome that could have easily been his dissolution… Still bleeding profusely, squirming, and twitching in unimaginable pain, Zorek collapsed to the ground and proceeded to sink into the infinite darkness around us… with the entirety of his powers spent, he fled…

I was a split second too late to snap myself out of the paralysis that witnessing Jake’s murderous onslaught had left me in to apprehend and finish off the bastard before he could escape in one piece…… Now that he’d retreated, I had no way of hunting him down to finish the job… no way to fulfill my morbid promise to him……

Regardless, Jake was still trembling and huddled on the floor, behaving as though the cry he’d just heard had nearly split his skull in two… Danny and I covered our ears at the time, but it wasn’t anything more than a minor deterrence… For Jake, it was like his worst, most mind-rending nightmare had come to life before his friable psyche… It was clear to me then that Zorek still continued to influence him… Even after his rebellion… This was definitely something I would need to cure him of, or Zorek could still remain a major threat to us……

As far as I was concerned though, Zorek’s days were numbered. He nearly suffered a grisly demise at Jake’s hands… it could have been his death sentence, but he narrowly escaped. With any luck at all, he might retreat into the shadows and find a new victim to terrorize… if he had any sense at all, he would _never_ mess with us again after that night’s events…

Being the hopelessly heroic individual I was, I still had every intention to revisit Zorek and give him hell if I found out he was torturing anyone else after having given up on his goal to destroy me… But if he left well enough alone, then I suppose I could too… Only time would tell, but the way Zorek was defied in every possible way that night, it had to be the most discouraging experience of his entire life. He would _never_ be able to claim us for his own…

I tentatively strode toward Jake, who was still reeling from the unearthly shriek that he just couldn’t get over no matter how hard he tried… I slowly and carefully placed a hand on his durable, armored shoulder. Even while alight in flame, the armor protected him from harm and left only warmth in its wake. He brought his head out of his hands and looked up at me with an astounded expression on his face… For a moment, I saw the same child who had gazed up at Danny and me innocently and curiously from that crib in our bedroom… I swallowed my pride and hugged him tight. I could feel Danny wrapping his own arms around that cold carapace along with me… We were finally reunited… in the _right_ way……

He didn’t hug us back, but that was to be expected. All in good time… We would heal him from this trauma and bring him back to full health… as a family…… I smoothly pulled myself away from the embrace and pressed down on a few buttons on the teleportation watch. With a heartfelt smile, I was finally ready to get out the words I’d been longing to say to him ever since I had first laid eyes on his gilded celestial form…

“Let’s go home…”


	15. Stained with Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this second half of my early stages of self-inflicted torment, both of my brothers and I managed to snatch final victory out of thin air and take Zorek down for the count... all with the help of my newborn brother's life-altering and character-defining decision to slip free from his master's clutches and return to the life of semi-normality that he was destined to take alongside his family.
> 
> Now, Danny and I can finally sit Jake down in our bedroom and unearth the much-anticipated truth of how he came to be. The family is reunited at last, and the group dynamic will never be the same again by the end of this significant and sentimental chapter.

Needless to say, the three of us returning home that night was an experience that will never dull in my memory for the remainder of my natural-born life… Those rare moments of peace where the three of us were blessed enough to be present in the same room together will always prove to be what are most precious to me; they were cherished reveries in which I always wished that the Sands of Time would just grind to a halt and last an eternity……

A few days late, but I kept my promise… Jakey was truly back in our care… _alive_ and _healthy_ … Fortune favored us all that night... and with his conscious decision to abandon that malicious upbringing he knew so well and find his place back in his family’s arms… all seemed right with the world…… for the first time in years……

Whatever darkness was clawing at the edges of my heart had undergone a startling transformation… Before I knew it, all the negativity that surrounded my soul had slowly begun to melt away…… It was as if I had finally convinced myself that I successfully passed the trial I’d previously set with the intention of putting every ounce of my conviction and power to the ultimate test of endurance.

In that moment, I truly believed that I had proven myself a hero. In the final confrontation, even Danny had his part to play this time that didn’t involve him inadvertently worsening the situation… and it goes without saying that Jake’s latent potential outshined us both by astronomical proportions.

Now we were home… as surreal as it felt, we were back home where we all belonged, unscathed and brimming with hope for this bright new future ahead of us… Danny and I continued to give our most comforting and reassuring regards to Jakey, who had remained dead silent for several minutes upon our arrival. Every so often, his bewildered eyes would flick back and forth between the two of us, but his guarded expression never declined… he understandably had no idea how to react in this daunting situation.

One thing was for sure, his armor wasn’t fooling anyone… This child might as well have been made out of glass considering all that he’s seen… and all that he knows about the darkest side of human nature…… He was surely taught to never show weakness, but how could anyone possibly expect that of someone his age…? His instability was palpable, and I honestly had no idea how to proceed from there out of fear that Danny or I would say the wrong thing that would set him over the edge…… and falling back toward his alleged “sworn master”……

The situation was delicate, but it was now or never… _Someone_ needed to break the ice before sunrise.

It was about 1:00 in the morning. I was currently seated in my black swivel chair in front of the computer but with the chair swung around to face my two brothers. Danny opted to sit on his bed close by, and Jake was positioned on my own bed near the end of the room… All eyes were on him, but Danny and I were both courteous enough to not freak him out by staring expectantly in his direction…

Danny shifted uncomfortably on his bed until he finally found his voice. I had no idea how to approach all of this tactfully, so I was secretly relieved that he took the initiative.

“So, umm… Do you want anything? Something to drink or… some food maybe…?” Danny asked hesitantly. There was a slight pause before Jake replied by shaking his head slowly. He was still very much on his guard… an acquired instinct that we’d definitely need to release him from before it consumed him for good. I decided it was time I tried taking the floor.

“Well… you… what is your name…? Can you tell us…?” I stammered eagerly, nervous that Zorek might have christened him with a different identity that Danny and I would have no choice but to get accustomed to… at least for a few hours… But Jake tossed me a perplexed look before answering my question… in a tone of voice that implied he didn’t even need to come out of his shell at all. Up until now, he was simply unwilling to talk to us.

“… You know my name, don’t you?”

Danny and I both couldn’t help but stumble after hearing him speak for the first time… He spoke more clearly and coherently than what should be natural for anyone under the age of 3… There was no uncertainty; no trouble at all with finding the right words… It was almost irrefutable… Jake had undoubtedly aged during his week spent with Zorek… but just how much older and wiser could he have become in such a short period of time!? And _how_ could this have transpired at all……???

“Your name is… Jakey? Or is it Jake…? Actually no, what do you _want_ to be called?” I tried to build as much credibility with him as possible. He needed to truly desire a life spent with us. He has been through more hell than the both of us combined and was old enough to decide for himself… We couldn’t force him to stay with us… and Danny and I just wanted to make sure he didn’t change his mind about the critical choice he'd made back there.

“My name is Jacob. But just call me Jake; I don’t really care either way.”

I was still getting used to his voice. It had more treble to it than Danny’s, and he seemed to have inherited my serious tone when discussing important matters. But after hearing it a second time, it was painstakingly obvious that he wasn’t even a toddler… He spoke perfectly; it made no sense……

I just nodded my head in comprehension while Danny scratched his own in confusion… We would shed light on Jake’s past life when he was ready to share, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight until I got one particular answer out of him _now._

“I’m… You should know that we’re not going to make you say anything about… before… until you’re ready to… But please tell us, how old are you…?” I asked with as much patience as I could muster… Thankfully, Jake seemed to understand why I inquired this based on how he pursed his lips and looked off to the side in thought…

“That's a little hard to explain…” he replied cryptically. However, he wasn’t going to leave us hanging for much longer. After a brief pause, he continued…

“I guess I’m technically four years old,” he said decisively.

…… Well, that’s the funny thing about answers… sometimes they just don’t add up……

If Jake was four years old, then why did he act like he was freaking 10…? I needed to know exactly what was so complicated about his state of being… I needed to know just how fucked up his growth development had really become…… But how the hell would I even be able to ask him that……?

Danny was stunned to discover this… With any luck, he’d find a way to procure some verity from Jake that would put both of our minds at ease…

“You’re four…? What do you mean by technically though? Is it because you don’t look or even act like you’re as old as you are…?” Danny expanded on the same question I’d been dying to know the answer to myself, but Jake thought long and hard about how he should convey said answer to us… Until he finally put it all together in the end… and this time not bothering to spare _any_ details…

“I’m really four. But something happened to me that boosted my intelligence and made me as smart as though I was thirteen – it was probably Physic Bender, he pays a lot of attention to me – I also just look a lot older than I really am. So I’m a thirteen-year-old trapped in a four-year-old’s body… even though I look like I’m ten… If that makes any sense…?” he explained with careful precision, hand gestures and all when the moment called for them…

My mind was racing… This was far more complicated than I was expecting… By the sounds of it, Jake was saying that Physic Bender utilized his reality-warping abilities to raise his mentality to that of a thirteen-year-old’s, somehow accelerated his aging process as I suspected… and to make things even _more_ confusing, this hastened age rate seemed to have thrown Jake’s physical growth development for a loop… and now his body is trying to catch up to his current level of maturity…

All things considered, it wasn’t as abysmal as my worst case scenario… Not even close. This was something that Danny and I could adapt to. Jake’s mentality and growth have both been tampered with, but at least he was still as healthy as he seemed to be. Zorek practically did him a kindness by not mutating him the way that bastard had apparently underwent himself…

The more I think of it, the more I realize just how pathetically amateurish Zorek was as far as malevolence was concerned… Was he docile? Hell no… But he also never really bothered to follow through with his schemes to devastate my psyche… He was a challenge and a threat, but he was also a failure… I would never actually _lose_ to him……

I think Danny just plain gave up on trying to figure out what the deal was with Jake’s age at that point. _I_ barely understood it, and I was responsible for being the wisest of the three of us since I was the eldest sibling… Quite frankly, it didn’t even matter. His age was inconsequential, it was his plans for the future that we needed to determine. As bitter as the idea was, I needed to make sure we could trust him… We couldn’t afford a repeat of the Andy incident we had with the Damned brothers…

“… Hey listen, I know this won’t be the most fun you’ve ever had, but it’s _really_ important we do this…” I started, glancing nervously at Danny as I redirected my gaze back to Jake. Jake didn’t really know how to respond, but he didn’t seem frightened… only jaded…

“Okay…” Jake muttered cautiously but apathetically.

I certainly captured Danny’s attention. We may have maintained a powerful brotherly bond, but it’s not like we could read each other’s minds… not _yet_ anyway… I spent a good minute stewing about what I should say to Jake next in order to guarantee his cooperation in this crucial affair.

“We’re gonna play a little game, okay…? I’m going to ask you a couple of questions… and all you have to do is tell me whether the things I’m telling you are _right_ to do _…_ or if they’re _wrong_ to do… Okay?” I asked him firmly with my hands clasped together on top of my knees, raising my eyebrows on the ‘okay’. I could practically see the wheels turning in Jake’s head… It didn’t take him long to realize exactly what I was getting at. Danny figured it out almost instantly, and he was definitely interested in seeing how this would all turn out.

“I know what you’re trying to do. Sure, I’ll play.” Jake said confidently. The whole point of the exercise was sort of defeated by his immediate knowledge of what it was for. The idea would have fared much better if Jake was as young and naïve as Danny and I originally thought he was… but it just goes to show, people can surprise you……

“Ok, first question… ‘Sharing with others’… Right or wrong?” I asked with great interest. But Jake took what I said and ran with it in his own way…

“What if I’m sharing a cold?” Jake asked with a smirk. I blinked blankly a few times and scratched the back of my head to avoid responding. This even caught Danny off guard… I hadn’t expected this kid to have such a sharp wit even if he _was_ practically 13…

“Umm, no—uhh… Let’s try another one… ‘Treating people the way you want to be treated’… Right or wrong?”

“And what if I don't want to treat myself right?” Jake asked, smiling to himself… It was all in good fun, I knew he felt no such way about himself… But my jaw nearly dropped when I heard such a grim prospect escape his lips… I looked over at Danny, whose eyes had widened as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

I decided enough was enough… no more of this nonsense. I was legitimately starting to worry about him now.

“Okay, I’m glad you’re having fun with this… But this isn’t a joke; it’s _not_ funny… Stop _twisting_ _my words_ , Jake. We need to make sure what you know about life is the _right_ way to live!” I made sure to make my feelings clear, but I was careful not to shout… and yet, raising my voice had no effect on him whatsoever… he wasn’t threatened by me. I guess I should have seen that as a good thing, but he needed to know how serious this all was…

“Look, sorry, I’ll answer for real this time. Promise.” he stated sincerely. I decided to give him another chance… but I was in no mood for that smartass attitude of his. Either he gave me a straight answer this time, or I was going to outright warn him that he _needed_ to tell us that he knew trying to hurt us is wrong… or else we’d need to go through some rather unconventional means of repairing his mindset.

“Okay… Last chance… ‘Listening to your parents’… Right or wrong?” I asked him, my eyes never once leaving his.

“Right,” Jake replied knowingly.

“Good…” Thank god, there was hope for him yet…

“Next one… ‘Stealing other people’s things’… Right or wrong?”

“Wrong,” Jake said flatly.

Danny gave me a measured look after that, and I decided it was time to ask Jake the million dollar question…

“Good… and this one? ‘Trying to hurt your family’… Right or wrong?”

I felt a chill run up my spine when I heard Jake sigh in submission… This one was apparently a truth that he didn’t seem to agree with right away…

“All my life, I was told it was what I was _born_ to do… But now I know it’s _very_ wrong,” he expressed in good conscience, before lowering his eyes in regret. “I’m sorry for trying… I know I can never take it back…”

Danny apparently had all he could stand with the somber atmosphere in the room and decided to do what he does best: throw some levity into the mix.

“Hey, don’t worry about it buddy… I mean, you didn’t get very far,” Danny phrased in amusement as he hopped out of bed to go sit beside Jake. Even then, Jake still wouldn’t let his proverbial shield down. He could never drop his guard…

“We’re here for you; that’s what brothers are for,” Danny said supportively, patting Jake’s shoulder reassuringly.

I followed Danny’s example and took a seat on the other side next to Jake… Upon closer inspection, I noticed the dark circles under Jake’s attentive eyes… He didn’t appear to be malnourished, but he wasn’t exactly the picture of perfect health either… His golden hair wasn’t really disheveled, but it was sort of ruffled… I couldn’t even begin to piece together how he’d managed to stay even remotely groomed under those circumstances… One could only imagine what his living arrangements were like while he was with Zorek……

Originally, the plan was to erase Jake’s memories with a device we’d pick up from the Prize-in-a-Can headquarters… and remold him to be his own person, rather than someone brainwashed to commit horrible acts of violence… But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that any attempt we made now of making him re-learn everything he ever knew would leave us with a brainwashed puppet; a shell of the brother we once knew… He wouldn’t know who we were and would be left with no personality at all… Jake was influenced beyond repair, and while his life was still a mystery and his very existence a curiosity, he was starting to develop a more caring demeanor for those he placed value in… He certainly earned a second chance……

I didn’t need to tell Danny… we were definitely in mutual agreement. A life of confusion and robotic mentality was not the future we had in mind for our younger brother… We decided to leave his brain as is… as the ultimate sign of the trust we had for him. 

My careful consideration was interrupted however when Jake surprised Danny and I both by asking _us_ a question for once…

“So now that you know all about me… Can I know more about you guys too?” he asked unassumingly.

Danny bit his lip nervously after hearing that, and I stroked my chin in thought… It was only fair… He’d answered every one of our questions to the best of his ability… This kid had seen it all firsthand… and he’d certainly earned our trust… I figured there would be no harm in getting him up to speed with our cacophony called "life".

Danny and I scooped the fruit of our pasts into his lap… and as if it was a form of induction, just like that… Jake was now a prominent part of the rest of our lives… who knew every aspect of them as much as we did.

He was in it for the long haul… for better or worse… and would forever carry with him the burden of my most dangerous secrets… Had I known what I was ultimately subjecting him to, I would have persuaded him to run far away from me… to live a normal life in peace…… But the stage had been set, and he would _never_ have that luxury……

…… Whether he was ready for it or not, it was all about to come crashing down around him in the most horrific way imaginable……

**Author's Note:**

> Bitter sacrifices are made to finally overcome the vengeful monsters in my life for good. I think it's safe to say that, while I'm still here and no longer threatened by those malicious entities, this story doesn't exactly portray the happiest of endings.


End file.
